
Class J^K\Z 

Book XiXifL 

Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Outlook 
for Religion 



By 

GEORGE RICHMOND GROSE 

President of DePauw University 



% 



(Eotratttaii : 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 

EATON AND MAINS 



p. 



i^ 



Copyright, 1913, 
by Jennings and Graham 



f. 



7/~ 



©CI.A34690J 



4t 



Contents 



Chapter Page 

I. The Present Standing of Faith. 7 

II. The Present-Day Use of the 

Bible 27 

III. Teaching Religion, 48 

IV. The Authority of Christ, - 62 

V. The Mission of the Prophet of 

God, 79 

VI. The Preaching for the Times, 93 

VII. The Supreme Issue, - - - 111 

VIII. The Apostolic Task and Its Re- 
action, - - - - 119 



The Outlook for Religion 



* 



The Present Standing of Faith 

W'HAT is the outlook for faith? The im- 
pression has gone abroad that the Christian faith 
has lost something of its former standing, that 
many of the beliefs of the Church are not ten- 
able, that the Bible has been discredited, and 
that the teachings of the Church are not worthy 
the consideration given them by the fathers. 
The result is that many men are giving little 
earnest thought to the things of the spirit. 
Hence this inquiry is of first importance: What 
is the present standing of faith? Have the teach- 
ings of revealed religion been discredited by the 
discoveries of modern science? Can religious 
truth claim a place with scientific truth? Are 
the essentials of the Christian faith jeopardized 
by the findings of physical science and by the lit- 
erary and historical study of the Scriptures? 

7 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

These are questions of absorbing interest to all 
thoughtful minds to-day. To them we hear 
varying answers. 

One man is in blind confusion; he does not 
know what to think about religious matters. 
He says despairingly, "I do not know what I 
belie ve." He hears of the conflicting religious 
beliefs and of the modifications of the old doc- 
trines of the Church. He is not able to discover 
the significance of the present restlessness, but 
concludes that it must mean something serious 
to faith. 

Another is agnostic in his attitude. He says : 
"Nothing can be known concerning the things 
of religion. There is, therefore, no profit in 
troubling one's self about God, and the forgive- 
ness of sins, and the immortality of the soul. 
These are mysteries beyond any reliable knowl- 
edge. " 

Still another is skeptical through a superfi- 
cial intellectualism. He has lost his faith through 
the alleged teachings of science. He hears that 
the Book of Genesis is shown to be untrue by 
the teachings of geology, that physical science 
has discredited the miracles, that evolution has 

8 



THE PRESENT STANDING OF FAITH 

driven Christianity from the field, and that the 
Church is rapidly becoming an obsolete institu- 
tion. The average man takes much of his belief 
or unbelief from the magazine philosopher and 
the platform lecturer. 

A fourth man refuses to treat seriously these 
questions. To him it seems irreverent even to 
reason with doubt. He places every inquiry 
under the ban of unbelief. He fears that the 
Christian faith may be imperiled by investiga- 
tion. This man is in a state of mental panic. 
He has been nurtured in the Christian faith; he 
wants to believe the doctrines of religion, but 
is afraid that higher criticism may undermine 
the Bible, and that the teachings of science 
will discredit the claims of Jesus Christ, and 
that the Christian faith may perish from the 
earth. 

But there is still another type of doubt 
which is more widespread and far more alarm- 
ing than these cited above. That is a sort of 
practical atheism. It is a moral apostasy, which 
has come through the eclipse of a living faith 
in God. It does not deny God intellectually, 
but, like the fool in the Scriptures, it says in 

9 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

its heart, "There is no God." It treats God and 
all the spiritual interests of life with utter in- 
difference. Whether it takes the form of brutal 
commercialism, or sensuous pleasure-seeking, or 
aesthetic culture for its own sake, it completely 
ignores God in the living of life. This stolid 
indifference is more alarming than the vehe- 
ment and blasphemous infidelity of an earlier 
day. The present generation, in large numbers, 
lacks conviction enough to believe or to disbe- 
lieve. It simply does not care. It treats re- 
ligion as something not worth while. And the 
fact that many of our people pay no heed to 
religion at all is the great peril of the present 
day. 

Now there can be no question that ours is 
a time of mental confusion and religious unrest. 
And this is not strange. The past century has 
contributed so many surprising discoveries, so 
many startling inventions, and so many new 
interpretations, that the average mind is not 
yet adjusted to the new and larger world. The 
result is widespread mental bewilderment. It 
is impossible that the religious mind should 
escape the perplexity and confusion incident to 

10 



THE PRESENT STANDING OF FAITH 

these revolutionary changes. In the midst, then, 
of the arrogant claims of the materialist and 
the agnostic in the name of science, and of the 
mental uncertainty and religious unrest of many 
believers, and of the stolid indifference to the 
moralities and spiritualities of a great multitude, 
we need to consider the present-day standing of 
faith. 

What are the signs of the times? Is faith in 
the Son of God becoming more and more a liv- 
ing reality and a growing power in human life; 
or has the Christian faith lost intellectual stand- 
ing and vital grip on the consciences of men? 
There is to-day a strange commingling of faith 
and doubt. There appeared a few years ago a 
book by Henry Van Dyke, entitled "The Gospel 
for An Age of Doubt," in which the writer de- 
scribed the signs of unbelief in our time. A little 
later there appeared in the Lowell Course of 
Lectures a book entitled "The New Epoch for 
Faith," by George A. Gordon, in which the 
author shows unmistakable signs of the return 
to faith, like an incoming tide. Both writers 
are true to the facts of life. 

It is easy to characterize the present time 
11 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

with a sweeping generalization, such as a "com- 
mercial age," or a "materialistic age," or an 
"age of doubt," or an "era of faith;" but such 
characterizations are little more than abstrac- 
tions. To say that this is an age of doubt means 
nothing more than that the prevailing tendency 
of thought is toward unbelief. On the other 
hand, to say that ours is an era of faith means 
that there is an increasing drift of thought and 
activity toward the things of the spirit. Neither 
faith nor doubt so completely dominates in any 
period of history as to warrant these wholesale 
characterizations. To remember this will help 
to save us, both from the folly of a "cuckoo 
optimism" and the despair of an "owlish pes- 
simism." But there are certain clearly-defined 
and deep-seated tendencies of life which we do 
well to note. 

First, there is a change in the temper of 
belief and doubt. The crude infidelity of earlier 
times has passed. The doubt which springs out 
of a thorough-going, materialistic view of life is 
rapidly passing. The doubt of the present day 
is of a different sort. It questions the reality of 
religion in human experience, the power of 

12 



THE PRESENT STANDING OF FAITH 

prayer, and the possibility of knowing God. It 
is less boastful and flippant than the doubt of a 
generation ago. The doubt of our time, for the 
most part, is profoundly serious and reverent. 
There is in much modern doubt, instead of 
boastful pride, an awful pang. Faith, in like 
manner, is not contending for petty details, but 
for the things which are vital to higher living. 
It holds rather to the few great essentials of 
religion which may be tested in the experience 
of the individual. Some of the serious doubt of 
to-day is to be found within the Church; and 
some of the strong faith is to be found outside 
the Church. 

Second, it is evident that traditional beliefs 
are losing their hold upon men's minds. The 
basis of religious authority and the ground of 
religious appeal have shifted. The modern con- 
science is seldom stirred by appeals to the doc- 
trines of the Church on the authority of the 
fathers. Men do not fear the anathemas of 
popes and the censure of Church councils as 
they once did. The appeal to faith based on 
external authority is no longer effective. The 
final truth-test is not, "Is this teaching ortho- 

13 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

dox, or Methodistic, or Presbyterian?" but, "Is 
it true? Can its truth be verified in concrete, 
personal experience? " But while many care 
little for dogmatic religion and for the conven- 
tional forms of faith, they are earnestly asking 
how the great life needs can be met. The un- 
satisfied religious aspirations of great multitudes 
of people to-day is none the less a fact than 
the widespread religious indifference. There is 
growing indifference to the non-essentials in 
religion, but there is evidence that thoughtful 
men care for the truth, for duty, and for the 
spiritual interests of life with a deep concern. 
Even though some of the external forms of 
faith may be slipping away, the earnest-minded 
are clinging to the fundamental truths of Chris- 
tianity, because they inspire faith, and give 
moral courage, and hold up worthy ideals for 
noble living. 

The causes underlying the religious situation 
of our time are many. But they are at bottom 
one: It is man's effort to adjust himself to the 
larger world, to the roomier universe into which 
scientific discovery has led him. The telescope 
has revealed the fact that our planet is not in 

14 



THE PRESENT STANDING OF FAITH 

the center of the universe, but is on the very 
outskirts of God's creation. The bounds of hu- 
man history have been pushed back to a remote 
time. Many of the discoveries of modern sci- 
ence have revolutionized men's thinking. As 
Professor Wallace tells us in his story of the 
achievements of the nineteenth century, the 
last century has contributed double the number 
of great discoveries contributed by all previous 
centuries together. Now, is it strange that 
faith should be disturbed in finding man's place 
in this bigger world and in readjusting itself to 
the new discoveries? The fact is that men have 
been so carried away with their discoveries and 
the fortunes of invention, that the things of the 
spirit have been neglected. We have been so 
occupied in mastering science, that science in 
the last half century has mastered us. The 
spiritualities have been smothered by the ma- 
terialities of life. For twenty years "evolution 
was an intellectual fad." Natural law was a 
god, before which the scholars bowed down to 
worship. So absorbed did men become in 
things that they forgot the claims of the unseen. 
And this intoxication with things — to know 

15 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

things, to master things, to possess things — is 
the chief reason for the doubt of our day. 

But already a reaction has set in. The moral 
and religious needs of men are asserting them- 
selves. The immortal spirit can not be satisfied 
with things. The soul of man is thirsting for 
the living God, and the result is an increasing 
tide of faith. 

Religion can no longer be regarded as a cre- 
ation of childish fancy or a flight of the dis- 
ordered imagination. Whenever man undertakes 
to find the soul and meaning of life he discovers 
that religion is his indispensable helper. "Con- 
sequently, after a long brow-beaten period, there 
rises once more an aspiration after eternal truth 
and infinite love." In the midst of all the 
welter of our day a rising tide of spiritual awak- 
ening appears that heralds the coming of a 
better day. 

What are the signs of the return to faith? 
First, the science of our day is recognizing the 
fact of religion as one of the facts of life that 
must be reckoned with. The master intellects 
of the present generation are on the side of the 
Christian faith. The two greatest poets of the 

16 



THE PRESENT STANDING OF FAITH 

nineteenth century — Browning and Tennyson — 
"strike a clear note of returning faith and 
hope." A student of modern philosophy, in a 
recent article, says: "The era of doubt is draw- 
ing to a close." Three of the most eminent 
scholars of Harvard University of the past 
decade, one a philosopher, the other a psycholo- 
gist, the other a geologist, began their careers 
as materialists or agnostics, but before the close 
d the century were avowed Christian theists. 
Huxley, one of the most interesting of nine- 
teenth century men, a fierce fighter for agnosti- 
cism, comes at last to listen patiently to the 
hypothetical plea, "If there be no meeting place 
beyond the grave." A generation ago the ma- 
jority of men of the medical profession educated 
in Europe were agnostic; the exact opposite is 
true to-day. Fifty years ago the drift of philo- 
sophic thought in the universities of Europe 
and America was toward the side of unbelief; 
to-day the great leaders in education and the 
large majority of the student body are Christian 
believers. John Stuart Mill, brought up without 
religion, declaring again and again that he felt no 
need of religion, in many pages of his autobi- 
2 17 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

ography attests not only his need, but also his 
endeavor to find a religion. The case of George 
C. Romanes is most significant. He began his 
academic career as an atheist. Perhaps the 
strongest argument ever written against the 
existence of God was written by this man. But 
in the last few years of his life he came back to 
an unshaken faith, and died in the communion 
of the Church of England. Professor Tait, 
another eminent scientist, wrote an article not 
long before his death, in which he declared there 
is not one skeptic among the greatest men of 
science to-day, calling the list of scientists one 
by one. A few years ago, in London, Lord Kel- 
vin declared in the face of the whole scientific 
world that it is all nonsense to say that science 
has either disproved or thrown any doubt upon 
divine creative power and energy. On the other 
hand, science proves the existence of creative 
power and energy. 

At the close of an address to the students of 
Johns Hopkins University, in which the writer 
was discussing this subject, President Remsen 
said, with great earnestness: "I think I have 
some right to speak on this question, having 

18 



THE PRESENT STANDING OF FAITH 

devoted my life to the study of science. And 
I say to you the most scientific life that I know 
is the Christian life." 

Now I have cited these instances at some 
length, in order to make clear the fact that the 
teachings of science, in the thought of the 
masters, have not discredited the Christian 
faith. While science makes no direct contribu- 
tion to the truth of religion, its indirect evidence 
is of great value. Science has strengthened 
vastly our belief in the reality of human destiny. 
We can not but believe that the physical world 
means something, and that "this meaning some- 
how culminates in man." Furthermore, the 
scientific passion for truth at all hazards has 
caused no little confusion for a time in the temple 
of religion; but when the Bible is re-read in 
the light of modern learning, and the facts 
of Christian experience are reinterpreted, the 
foundation of God still stands firm. The 
scientific method has brought forth no facts 
which discredit faith intellectually. It must also 
never be forgotten that the scientific spirit is a 
valuable ally of the Christian faith. Instead of 
the growth of knowledge making faith either 

19 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

insecure or unnecessary, it is preparing the way 
of the Lord. When we accept the latest dis- 
covery of science and the last word of philos- 
ophy upon the problem of life, we can still be 
Christians. 

If we appeal to the leading philosophers of 
the present generation with our inquiry, "What 
is the standing of faith?" the answers are still 
more assuring. Borden P. Bowne for a quarter 
of a century, with rare brilliancy of thought and 
profound spiritual insight, bears witness to the 
rationale of faith and the supremacy of Jesus 
Christ; William James insists upon the reality 
of religious phenomena; Rudolph Eucken main- 
tains that down deep in the intellect of man and 
in his own soul there is a life religious; and 
Henri Bergsen, in his "Creative Evolution," 
pleads with the present age to recognize the 
primacy of the soul. These and many other 
master minds of the present generation pro- 
claim "The morning cometh." The light of a 
new and redemptive day is already on the hills, 
giving promise 

"That at the next white corner of the road 
My eyes may look on Him." 

20 



THE PRESENT STANDING OP FAITH 

The dominant philosophy of to-day is assuring 
us, with increasing clearness and vigor, that the 
only solution of the problem of life is through 
an alliance with religion. 

But even more convincing than the drift of 
modern scholarship toward faith is the evidence 
which comes from an appeal to life itself. Life 
must be lived. And life, strong, wholesome, 
courageous, helpful life, can not be lived on the 
basis of thorough-going doubt. I am a man. 
And when my body is fed and clothed and 
housed, and my mind stored with facts, my 
wants are not all met. My heart needs faith 
and hope and love. Without these my life be- 
gins in weakness, faces struggle and storm with- 
out strength, and ends in despair. With all our 
knowledge of the processes and laws of life 
to-day, science gives no answer to the great 
questions of the soul — Whence? Whither? Why? 
Science tells us how the world was made; re- 
ligion must tell us what it was made for. Science 
gives us the laws of life; religion must tell us of 
the beginning and destiny of life. There ought 
to be no quarrel between science and religion. 
No more ought the eye and the telescope to 

21 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

quarrel. Faith and reason are never contradic- 
tory. Faith supplements reason. It answers 
the cry of the heart and the rational demand 
for meaning and purpose and love in life. 

The return to faith comes out of a new sense 
of the preciousness of life. Life ultimately de- 
termines reality. Life, with its thousand needs 
claiming satisfaction, makes for the conviction 
that whatever supports life is true. There is 
to-day a mighty movement of intellectual awak- 
ening and moral enthusiasm and self-sacrifice 
for the service of men. It is the inspiration and 
the product of the Christian faith. Take faith 
in God and in goodness out of men's lives, and 
you wreck the whole structure of human society. 
There can be no well-ordered society, no good 
government, no broad education, no high moral 
living, if men cease to have the inspiration, the 
restraint, and the comfort of the Christian faith. 

The fact of the spiritual life, and the aspira- 
tion after a religion of the spiritual life, are be- 
coming more and more recognized. There is 
such a thing as concrete religious experience, 
and this concrete religious experience is the 
authoritative guarantor of the truth of religion. 

22 



THE PRESENT STANDING OF FAITH 

In human experience there is such a thing as 
faith, that gives reality to the physically un- 
seen, that "stops the mouths of lions, that turns 
to flight armies of aliens;" there is a love that 
"beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth 
all things, endureth all things;" there is such a 
thing as the emergence from the life of the 
senses into the new life of the spirit. Now, 
however mistaken or inadequate may be our 
conception and statement of this truth, still the 
foundation of God rests on this concrete fact of 
soul-experience. Whatever new difficulties may 
present themselves to the faith of the future, 
this much is certain: that the only hope of pre- 
venting the coming of an "old age upon hu- 
manity," is to draw "new energies and depths 
of the spiritual life into the domain of man." 
The present situation is difficult and full of 
dangers; but so long as the Christian faith 
meets the "inner necessities of the spiritual life 
within the soul of man," so long our holy faith 
stands secure. If traditional orthodoxy can no 
longer hold its own, it is equally certain that a 
soulless, rationalistic culture can not claim the 
day. The insatiable human soul ceaselessly 

23 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

cries out for the living God. A new valuation 
is being put upon religion by the sheer neces- 
sities of the life which is to be lived here and 
now. In the striking phrase of Professor Ru- 
dolph Eucken, there is something "driving men 
to-day back to religion;" and that "something" 
is the inborn spiritual nature of man. It is the 
upward and Godward push of his divine in- 
heritance as a child of the Infinite. Further- 
more, the very complexity of our modern life 
is producing an increasing dissatisfaction with 
a civilization which centers in self and in the 
world; and this growing dissatisfaction and spir- 
itual yearning are driving men back to religion. 
There is a voice within, which is crying cease- 
lessly, "Man can not live by bread alone." 
This fact rediscovers to us in the twentieth 
century the primacy of the human soul, which 
Jesus declared in the first century, "What is 
man profited, if he gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul?" 

So the true value of religion is being appre- 
ciated as never before. When has there been 
a period in which the dominant philosophic 
thought has joined with the religious aspira- 

24 



THE PRESENT STANDING OF FAITH 

tions of the multitudes and with the redemptive 
experience of the men of faith in attesting the 
truth of religion? It is this concurrent testi- 
mony to spiritual reality that is giving to re- 
ligion a new standing to-day, and holding the 
promise of a "new and redemptive day in the 
history of faith." The Christian faith has noth- 
ing to fear, except that men may be satisfied 
with defending the gospel instead of preaching 
it; that they shall argue for the supernatural 
instead of doing the supernatural; that they 
shall spend their time proving the immortality 
of the soul instead of living the immortal life. 
For, after all, the Christian faith rests finally 
not on an argument, but on a concrete experi- 
ence. It is life that cries out for Christ; it is 
life that Christ satisfies; it is life that Christ 
brings. But the apologetic which considers only 
the intellectual standing of the Christian faith 
is not complete. The Christian faith will lan- 
guish while we are making unanswerable argu- 
ments in its support. The only evidence suffi- 
cient to-day to keep alive men's belief in the 
supernatural is to do the supernatural. One 
twice-born man is a better defense of the Chris- 

25 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

tian faith than many volumes on the psychology 
of conversion. 

There is need now and ever of adventurous 
souls, intellectually and spiritually adventurous, 
who will blaze "a trail to God across the tangled 
wild" of present-day philosophies and skepti- 
cisms. And as long as Christ brings new life, 
abounding life, so long the Christian faith 
stands unshaken in the thought and confidence 
of men. 

It is because our very life cries out for the 
living God that we may believe profoundly in 
the secure standing-place of faith. Faith is not 
in peril. The faith that the Bible has a message 
from the living God to men, that God is the 
Father of all men, that all good things are safe 
in His hand, that Jesus Christ is the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life, that faith is more secure 
than ever. 



26 



II 

The Present-Day Use of the Bible 



Wh 



HAT of the present standing of the Holy 
Scriptures? Are we warranted in still holding 
that the Sacred Scriptures contain all things 
necessary to salvation, so that whatever is not 
read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is 
not to be required of any man that it should be 
believed as an article of faith, or be thought 
requisite or necessary to salvation? 

The very question thrusts us at once into 
an atmosphere rife with discussion. For half a 
century the Bible has been the storm-center of 
religious interest. Its literary make-up has 
been critically studied; its historical statements 
have been questioned; its scientific allusions 
have been investigated in the light of modern 
science; the practices of its leading characters 
have been judged by the present-day conscience. 

27 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

It has been in the limelight of skeptical criti- 
cism and of reverent scholarly investigation for 
over fifty years. What is to be our attitude 
toward the Bible? The question is a funda- 
mental one, for the Bible is the text-book of 
Christianity. Its teachings are the foundation 
of modern civilization and the doctrines of the 
Christian Church. Is it merely one of the sacred 
books of the world, taking its place beside the 
Koran or the Egyptian Book of the Dead? Is 
its inspiration like that of other great master- 
pieces of literature — "The Psalm of Life," "In 
Memoriam," "Paradise Lost" — or is the Bible 
in a peculiar sense the message of God to man- 
kind? Does it speak to the soul of man with an 
authority that is unapproached? 

There are various answers to this question. 
Men are making the most contradictory asser- 
tions concerning the value of the Scriptures, 
and mental confusion is widespread. There are 
those to whom the Bible presents no intel- 
lectual difficulties. All its statements, however 
contradictory, are accepted without question. 
However incredible its stories, they are believed 
to be reliable history, because they are in the 

28 



THE PRESENT-DAY USE OF THE BIBLE 

Bible. Besides, the Old Book is clothed with 
such a halo of sentiment and reverence, that 
when the modern scholar begins to ask questions 
about its authorship, its literary character and 
human elements, these friends are annoyed. 
They affirm their belief in the Book "from lid 
to lid," whatever the findings of the scholars 
may be. 

But there are other people in sore perplexity 
concerning the Bible. They have been taught 
to believe the Bible is God's Book, and yet they 
do not know how to interpret what they find 
in its pages. They have been taught that it is 
a book of perfect morality, yet it records atroc- 
ities committed under the alleged sanction of 
the Almighty. They have been taught that it 
is an infallible book, yet they find discrepancies 
in historical statements which they can not rec- 
oncile, and miraculous stories which seem to 
them incredible. There are no religious diffi- 
culties with which the teacher and the preacher 
meet among thoughtful people to-day so serious 
and numerous as the difficulties which they 
meet in the Scriptures. There is a great dis- 
tress in the minds of many earnest people who 

29 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

are struggling to reach conceptions of the Scrip- 
tures which will satisfy their minds and hearts. 

There are other persons who look upon the 
Bible as an outgrown book. To them it is "a 
mass of myths and falsehoods, all of which have 
been exploded by the discoveries of science." 
And so we have been witnessing this distressing 
spectacle — men like Dr. John W. Draper, in his 
book on "The Conflict Between Science and 
Religion," and Dr. Andrew D. White, in his 
"Warfare of Science with Theology," setting 
aside the Bible because it is contradicted by 
science. On the other hand, we see misguided 
disciples of Jesus trying to overturn the truths 
of science by quotations from the Scriptures. 

What practical use can men to-day make of 
the Scriptures? The Christian creed concerning 
the Bible is nobly expressed in these words of 
Paul: "Every Scripture inspired of God is 
profitable, that the man of God may be com- 
plete, thoroughly furnished." This declaration 
of their supreme worth for life is made by the 
claim of our Lord*: "The words which I have 
spoken unto you are spirit, and they are life." 
Here, then, in the words of Jesus and of Paul, 

30 



THE PRESENT-DAY USE OF THE BIBLE 

we have a statement of the character and use of 
the Bible. It is a mighty force to be used for 
the moral and spiritual furnishing of life. This 
is the astounding claim of Christendom: that 
the Bible contains the spiritual truth and 
knowledge needed for the illumination and 
transformation and guidance of men's lives. 
The program of Jesus and the Christian Church 
has shown magnificent faith in the unique 
character and power of the Word of God. Ths 
one force upon which Jesus depended was the 
sheer power of His gospel. He gave His great 
teachings with reckless prodigality to learned 
Jews and ignorant peasants — to a Nicodemus 
and to a woman of Samaria — believing that 
His Word was the seed, having in its own life 
the guarantee of the harvest. So utter was His 
faith in the vital power of His message that He 
made this the sole instrument in establishing the 
heavenly kingdom. If He performed miracles, 
they were only the concrete embodiments or 
scenic illustrations of some supreme truth which 
had to be seen in order to be felt. 

And what was the equipment with which 
He sent forth the founders of the Christian 

31 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

Church? Simply His Word — no ritual, no sys- 
tem of Church government, no scheme of or- 
ganization, no plan for the redemption of the 
world, save by "the foolishness of preaching." 
Everywhere the heralds of the cross went they 
had one charge, "Preach the Word." Whatever 
the task to be achieved, they had but one in- 
strument, the sword of the Spirit, the Word of 
God. Whatever the citadel to be stormed — the 
corruption of Corinth, the materialism of Ephe- 
sus, the imperial paganism of Rome — it was 
always and only with the proclamation of the 
Word of God. And what is this vast missionary 
enterprise of the Christian Church of to-day, 
invading every continent and island of the sea, 
holding out to all of every land and tongue an 
open book — the Bible? There is nothing like it 
in human history. Men and women leaving 
their homes, going among strange and often 
degraded peoples, expecting to change their 
social customs and their political ideals; to found 
homes instead of harems; to transform the whole 
moral life of communities. With what? Not 
with new physical forces, not with new political 
constitutions, not with new truths for the mind; 

32 



THE FRESENT-DAY USE OF THE BIBLE 

but with the words of God, which have in them 
power of intellectual quickening, social uplift, 
moral transformation, and spiritual comfort. 

First of all, note the intellectual force of the 
Bible. Here is a unique library, composed of 
sixty-six books, written in three languages, by 
thirty different writers, its composition covering 
a period of a thousand years. In this collection 
of pamphlets and books is gathered almost every 
variety of literature — history, fiction, poetry, ro- 
mance, orations, sermons, codes of law, doctrinal 
expositions, prophecies, and apocalypses. The 
Bible "addresses and creates alert intelligence. It 
is the most important single educative force in the 
modern world." 1 Millions have learned to read in 
order that they might read the Bible; students by 
the thousand are studying Greek simply to read 
the New Testament. The Hebrew language 
would long ago have been lost to the Christian 
world but for the desire to read the ipsissima 
verba of Israel's prophets and sages. 

But more, there is another aspect of the 
educational force of the Bible of even greater 
significance: it enlarges the outlook; it widens 

*Cf. Faunce, "The Educational Idea of the Ministry," page 78. 

3 33 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

the horizon of human life; it compels the men 
of Europe and America to look at the problems 
of life through the atmosphere of the Oriental 
mind. As we face the great questions of truth, 
duty, destiny, it makes us the companions of 
those in the far distant parts whose ideas and 
institutions and movements have most affected 
human history. The Bible gives to the common 
reader a world horizon, kindling the imagination 
and arousing to nobler ideals. It is the very core 
of all true education. From the purely intel- 
lectual point of view, in the impulse toward 
culture which it has awakened, "the Bible has 
performed in modern times a vastly greater 
educative service than the entire classical liter- 
ature of the Greeks and Romans." 

Take a wider view. Every student of history 
is familiar with the way in which the spirit of 
the Scriptures has affected the civilization of 
the world. Five hundred years ago John Wyclif 
translated the Scriptures into the language of 
the English people. This marked the beginning 
of a new and grander epoch in English history 
— an era of intellectual awakening, of political 

1 Cf . Faunce, " The Educational Idea of the Ministry,*' page 80. 

34 



THE PRESENT-DAY USE OF THE BIBLE 

reform, and of moral and religious advance- 
ment. One hundred and fifty years later Luther 
found a copy of God's Word in the library at 
Erfurt, and its translation into the German 
language was the beginning of Germany's great- 
ness. Again the Bible proved itself the spirit 
and life of the nation. A little later Philippe de 
Marnix, from a prison in Utrecht, into which he 
had been thrust by the Spaniards, began the 
translation of the Scriptures into the Dutch 
language. The result, the Dutch Republic was 
born, and has stood ever since a citadel of de- 
mocracy and liberty. At the centenary of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society, Mr. Choate, 
American ambassador to the English court, 
made this notable utterance: "The Pilgrim 
Fathers carried their only possession of lasting 
value to the new England from the shores of 
old England. That wonderful possession was 
the King James 5 Bible. Upon it a new State was 
founded; it was their only readable book; it 
was the ark of their covenant; and within its 
sacred covers they found 

Their shelter from the stormy blast 
And their eternal home. 

35 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

Would you know how completely the Bible was 
the one treasure of these early pioneers of civili- 
zation in the West, you only need to see* one of 
the few copies of family Bibles handed down to 
us. Its leaves were dog-eared, where they were 
absolutely worn away by the pious thumbs that 
had turned them. Twice a year it was read 
through in each family, from Genesis to Reve- 
lation. The laws and customs of the community 
were founded upon the Holy Book." 

Now it is no accident that the greatest 
period in English history, the birth of English 
literature, the founding of the Dutch Republic, 
the beginning of Germany's greatness, and the 
establishment of the American Republic pointed 
to the Bible in the hands of the people. Skep- 
tics may cavil, the Scriptures may be accused 
of being unhistorical, unscientific, and even im- 
moral in some of their recorded incidents; but 
here is a fact which no blizzard of infidelity has 
ever shaken: the sovereign civilizations of the 
world testify to the power and vitality of the 
Holy Book. God's Word in Christ has been the 
life of nations. It has been, and still is, the one 
creative, vitalizing power, ever pushing men 

36 



THE PRESENT-DAY USE OF THE BIBLE 

upward and onward, out of ignorance and servi- 
tude and moral despair. 

The Bishop of London, visiting America at 
the time of the Jamestown Exposition on an 
errand for his majesty's government, presented 
to the old Bruton Church, from Edward VII, 
a copy of the Bible. The lectern on which it 
rests was presented by the President of the 
United States. The base of the lectern stands 
upon a large globe, supported by the symbols 
of the English and American nations — the lion 
and the eagle — a parable of the growth and 
greatness of these two nations. 

But more important still than the creation 
of intellectual alertness has been the force of the 
Bible in the making of character. Notwith- 
standing all the misunderstandings which have 
been heaped upon its truth and the superstition 
which has clouded its pages, in the Bible we 
hear "the voice of God forever speaking across 
the centuries the laws of right and wrong." 
We turn to the Old Testament and we hear the 
voices of the Hebrew prophets denouncing the 
sins of the rich and the privileged classes, plead- 
ing for the protection and the rights of the 

37 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

poor, and by their lofty patriotism setting 
ablaze before our eyes the deathless ideals of 
just government and political equality. It is 
in the Old Testament that the sense of civic and 
social duty was born. Turn to the New Testa- 
ment — it is the first and foremost exponent of 
religious individualism. Jesus discovered the 
individual, and out of the magnificent individ- 
ualism of the New Testament have sprung the 
moral initiative and energy of the modern 
world. It is no mere coincidence that the great 
forward movements in moral reform and in re- 
ligion have been closely connected with the 
revival of the study of the Scriptures. The 
great theological awakening in England began 
in the prayerful study of the Greek Testament 
by a little group of Oxford students. What was 
the motive power of the movement in England 
which led to the liberating of her slaves? Wil- 
berforce and his companions, while traveling on 
the Continent, began to freshen their knowledge 
of the Greek Testament, and out of that sprung 
the freedom of the slaves. Whence has come 
the mighty crusade in the interest of the masses 
of toilers, proclaiming industrial freedom, but 

38 



THE PRESENT-DAY USE OF THE BIBLE 

from the new ability to apply the teachings of 
Jesus to social and industrial conditions? His- 
tory abundantly justifies the claim of Jesus: 
"The words that I have spoken unto you are 
spirit and are life." The Word is the herald of 
the Spirit that moves over the chaos of the 
world, creating government, industry, knowl- 
edge, religion, and making everything in its 
order beautiful. 

But if the Bible has been a mighty factor in 
the creation of a higher national life, it is be- 
cause it brings the regenerating power of God 
into the life of the individual. What appeal 
does the Bible make to us as men? If you are 
a student of literature you will admire the 
variety and the richness of its literary treasures; 
but it is more than a book of authentic history, 
inspiring poetry, and stirring prophecy. Its lit- 
erary gems have been set in the great master- 
pieces of our language; and yet the dynamic of 
the Word of God is not in its literature. As 
you read these pages you are impressed not 
with the fineness of the writings, but with the 
moral burden of every book of the Bible. Its 
everlasting appeal is to the conscience of men. 

39 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

It always speaks to man as a moral being, as 
an immortal. It speaks to him of sin, of right- 
eousness, of judgment. Its revelation begins 
when moral and religious ideals are low, and 
character is debased. And in the moral child- 
hood of the race certain practices were per- 
mitted which outrage the moral sense of our 
day. In the outworking of the divine plan for 
the Hebrew nation God used certain low and 
imperfect instruments in the accomplishment of 
His purpose. He took men as He found them 
and spoke to them on their plane, so as to lift 
them to a higher. "New truths about God 
have to grow out of the sheaths of old ones," 
because the Bible is a living book. It is the 
record of the growing revealment of God to a 
growing race — a race developing in spiritual 
perception and in depth and in vigor of moral 
purpose. If measured by the Christian ideal, 
the Bible contains a strange mixture of ideas 
and laws, practices and principles, which are 
far from perfect. But notwithstanding the fact 
that many of its laws have been abrogated and 
its customs outgrown and its ideals enlarged, it 
throbs with moral purpose. Notwithstanding 

40 



THE PRESENT-DAY USE OF THE BIBLE 

it begins with men on low moral levels, from the 
very first it sets before them one supreme goal 
— the doing of the perfect will of God. If some 
of its earlier moral standards are outgrown, 
everywhere there is uncompromising opposition 
to evil and the proclamation of the holy will of 
God as the supreme law of life. 

How close the Bible comes to the moral life 
of every man! He is conscious of standing be- 
tween two worlds, each of which claims him for 
its own; and so his life is one endless moral 
struggle. How vividly this conflict appears on 
the pages of the Bible! From the Garden of 
Eden to Gethsemane, with Adam and Abraham, 
with Jacob and Joseph, with Saul and David, 
with Peter and Judas, with Paul and Demas, 
with one and all, it is the same endless warfare. 
Everywhere the Bible rings out the appeal to 
men to stand, and having done all, to stand. 
A great skeptic has said, "That if anything 
could prove the book to be the Word of God, it 
is this way it has of aiding conscience in opening 
our eyes to the two possibilities which lie before 
us, and bidding us choose for eternity." When 
does the right look so glorious and truth so 

41 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

mighty as when these stand before us and make 
their appeal through the Word of God? 

But the supreme value of the Bible for mod- 
ern life is not its educative force, quickening the 
intellects of men, nor its moral power, creating 
the great moral movements of the world. Its 
greatest value is as a teacher of religion. It is 
pre-eminently a book of religion. 

The failure to apprehend this simple fact 
has been the fruitful source of the past misun- 
derstanding of the Bible. It is not intended to 
teach science. It is not designed to be a cyclo- 
pedia of universal knowledge. It is a Book of 
Religion, produced by and recording men's ex- 
perience of God. It lifts men out of the ma- 
terialism of a sense- world and discovers to them 
the realities and the glories of the unseen. It gives 
to the world and to human life a spiritual mean- 
ing. In the midst of the moral chaos and wicked- 
ness of the earth, it sets men to believing in, and 
working for a new earth wherein dwelleth right- 
eousness. With the shadows of human suffer- 
ing thick around us, with the tragedies of life 
multiplying, it shows to men the bleeding hands 
and brow of Calvary's Divine Sufferer; and in 

42 






THE PRESENT-DAY USE OF THE BIBLE 

His agony we hear the heart-cry of the Infinite 
God, suffering with His children. With the 
burden of life's sorrow and the mystery of death 
and the grave upon us, the world would be con- 
verted into a vast asylum of despair, were it 
not for the great words of God's truth and 
promise. The Bible's purpose is to answer the 
supreme questions of life — What is God? How 
does He think and feel toward men? What has 
God done for men? What is man's duty and 
destiny? The answer to these questions, which 
will not down, is the great burden of the Book. 

What if the geology of Genesis is in conflict 
with modern science? The Bible gives to us 
that mighty affirmation w T hich has never fallen 
from the lips of scientist: "In the beginning 
God created the heaven and the earth." What 
if its heroes were imperfect men? It shows us 
how their minds were illuminated and their 
characters ennobled as they walked with God. 
What if its scattered ethical maxims are de- 
fective, and some of its social customs degrad- 
ing? It furnishes "the highest and most effect- 
ive inspiration for human living." 

The chief question, then, to ask of the Bible 
43 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

is not the question of the higher critic as to 
date, authenticity, and literary composition; 
it is rather, what is its central doctrine of 
life? What its effective moral force in human 
living? 

The truth which fairly throbs and flames on 
every page of the Bible is of "a world with God 
in it, of humanity with God in it, of history 
with God in it, of a great world movement from 
God through humanity to God again, whose 
God is all in all." 

In the phrase of Coleridge, the Bible finds us 
and helps us to find God. It may contain er- 
rors of science or history, it may portray moral 
imperfections in its characters and incidents; 
but so long as it "finds us in the deepest places 
and springs of life," and gives a voice to our 
cries in all our moods of triumph and defeat, of 
joy and misery, so long as its words speak to us 
across the ages with imperishable insight into 
human needs, it will live and prevail. 

It contains the soul's sublimest liturgy. In 
the hour of trust it voices our confidence, "The 
Lord is my Shepherd." In the day of trouble 
it exults in the great consolation, "God is our 

44 



THE PRESENT-DAY USE OF THE BIBLE 

refuge and strength." In the high noon of joy 
it gives us our song, "Bless the Lord, O my 
soul." In the valley of depression it breathes 
our prayer, "Unto Thee, O Lord, do I lift up 
my soul." In the gathering darkness it voices 
our triumphant cry, " The Lord is my Light and 
He is become my salvation." In approaching 
death it whispers, "In my Father's house are 
many mansions." 

Now the contention is that because the Old 
Book has been the greatest educative force in 
modern history, because it creates character, 
because it brings men to the feet of God and 
leaves them there, it has a secure intellectual 
standing-place. If this contention is true, the 
most important thing is not the historicity of 
the story of Jonah's adventure. What is more 
important is that the "Book of Jonah gives us 
the earliest known proclamation of a divine 
love which knows no bounds of race or creed, 
but enfolds every human being." The seat of 
the Bible's authority is not in the infallibility of 
its details, but in its absolute reliability as a 
guide to God, to righteousness, and peace. Its 
authority rests on its ability to present a picture 

45 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

of God and man which our enlightened reason 
and purest affection approve as true. 

You are to go to the Bible not for scientific 
theses, nor for a forecast of coming events. It 
is not a treatise on science, nor a celestial weather 
bureau. It is not a mere text-book of theology. 
It is a book of religion, which guides men into 
a knowledge of God and into the faith of Christ, 
and into the glory of righteousness. It brings 
men into an experience of the peace of forgive- 
ness, of the power of prayer, of the poise of 
trust, and of the joy of heavenly hope. 

Here, then, is the Bible tried and tested in 
the fires of criticism, and not found wanting. 
Its supreme authority in morals and religion is 
vindicated by Christ and by the experience of 
the Church for two millenniums. History bears 
witness to its power in the civilization of the 
world, and in the great forward movements of 
humanity. In the experience of scholar and 
peasant it has been a guide to peace and to 
God. Its moral and spiritual teachings have 
been confirmed, and not discredited, by science. 
Its pages are aglow with instruction and inspi- 
ration for right living. Its abiding value is not 

46 



THE PRESENT-DAY USE OF THE BIBLE 

its contribution to science, to philosophy, to 
literature, but in the complete equipment for 
life which it gives us. While "it does not re- 
move the intellectual difficulties which we feel 
in contemplating life and the world, it outflanks 
them by a reverence for God, which makes it 
possible to trust and love Him, notwithstanding 
the mystery of His ways; and which assures us 
that all good things are safe and are moving on 
and up 

" Through graves and ruins and the wreck of things, 
Borne ever Godward with increasing might.' ' 

Back of the mystery and uncertainty of our 

lives, back of the apparent aimlessness of much 

history, and back of the woe and horror of 

much more, it reveals God — the Almighty 

Friend and Lover of men, the Chief of burden 

bearers, and the Leader of all in self-sacrifice. 

Over the seething chaos there breathes a Spirit 

divine; from everlasting to everlasting there 

stretches a broad bow of promise and of light."' 

The Bible is 

" The Fountain-Light of all our day, 
A Master Light of all our seeing." 



1 Bowne, " Studies in Christianity," page 24. 

47 



in 
Teaching Religion 

HERE is one aspect of the work of the 
Christian Church which is not receiving to-day 
the attention which it deserves. There is a 
popular demand for the preacher-evangelist, for 
the pastor-preacher, for the preacher-adminis- 
trator, for the preacher-reformer, and the 
preacher-healer. But in the popular mind the 
preacher-teacher is not in the foreground. The 
working program of the present-day Church 
does not give the teaching of religion a promi- 
nent place. 

Now there are four popular conceptions con- 
cerning teaching religion. The first is that re- 
ligion can not be taught. There are many 
devout and earnest souls who believe that their 
experience of spiritual things has come to them 
direct from God; that it can not be mediated or 

48 



TEACHING RELIGION 

shared by another. According to this view, 
religion is too personal to be taught. It comes 
to us from God — a new life complete — and 
teaching is not necessary. 

The second view conceives of religion mainly 
as a doctrine to be believed. According to this 
view, religion has been taught when certain 
doctrines about God have been accepted intel- 
lectually. Its method is the catechism and the 
doctrinal sermon. It glorifies the creed. It 
proclaims the saving power of right beliefs. To 
the man whose religion is primarily dogma, the 
unpardonable sin is heresy — a departure from 
the doctrinal standard. 

Next to the conception of religious teaching 
solely as the imparting of knowledge is that 
which regards it as being merely the creation of 
emotion. This is the narrow revivalist's method, 
while the other is the method of the dogmatist. 
These two ideas of religious teaching are pro- 
ducing, side by side, in every community two 
types of religious life, one aiming chiefly to give 
intellectual instruction, the other to cultivate 
religious feeling. 

But to a fourth man religion is not merely 
4 49 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

an isolated experience which is imparted direct 
from God, nor a creed to be taught, nor an 
emotion to be felt. It is conduct. To him, 
teaching religion is instruction in the moral 
duties of life. To him the preacher is the spir- 
itual director who guides and controls the eth- 
ical activities of men's lives. 

These are some of the various conceptions 
concerning the teaching of religion. Here they 
stand, side by side, the mystic teaching religion 
as revelation; the dogmatist, as creed; the re- 
vivalist, as feeling; and the moralist, as law. 

It will be seen at once that the difference in 
these various methods grows out of the differ- 
ence in men's conception of what religion really 
is. The conception of religion which the people 
called Methodists have held from the beginning, 
is an experience of the life of Christ in the life 
of man. It proposes, by means of truth taught, 
by means of emotions awakened, by means of 
direction in duty-doing, to bring men to Christ. 
In other words, the teaching of religion, here 
set forth as the chief function of the Church, 
does not ignore doctrine, or emotion, or dis- 
cipline. It looks beyond them always, to every 

50 



TEACHING RELIGION 

man brought into vital relation with Jesus 
Christ, making truth a mirror through which 
men see Christ; arousing the feelings of the soul 
in the presence of Christ; teaching men to do 
the things which Christ commands. The con- 
ception of teaching religion which runs through- 
out this discussion is that truth and feeling and 
duty all spring from the living Christ and return 
to Him again. Doctrine and emotion and rules 
of conduct are not an end in themselves. They 
have value only as means through which we 
come to know Christ. This insight gives a new 
dignity and importance to the work of the min- 
ister as the truth-teacher. Interpreting religion, 
then, not as a spiritual prodigy, not as a dogma, 
not as ritual, not as conduct, but as life in and 
by and for Christ, sustained and guided by the 
truth of Christ, the supreme task of the Chris- 
tian Church is teaching religion. 

The first warrant for the teaching ministry 
of the Church is in the New Testament. In the 
Gospels and Epistles we are always in sight of 
the teaching-preacher. Such was Jesus. When 
the multitudes came He taught them. The oft- 
reiterated preamble, with which the evangelist 

51 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

introduces His matchless words, is, "And He 
opened His mouth and taught them, saying." 
The first popular impression which the Gospels 
record is that He taught the people "as one 
having authority." Nicodemus voiced the con- 
viction of the serious-minded in his salutation, 
"We know that Thou art a Teacher come from 
God." It was the teaching of Jesus that first 
gripped the minds of the people. And who 
were His converts? The name He gives them 
is suggestive of the dominant characteristic of 
His ministry. They were disciples — learners. 

Again, the history of the Christian Church 
will not let us forget the value of a teaching 
evangelism. The addresses in the Acts of the 
Apostles of Stephen, and Paul, and Peter were 
not mere exhortations to men to repent; they 
were instructions in the truth of Christ. They 
preached Christ and the Resurrection. They 
reasoned with men of temperance, righteous- 
ness, and judgment. Whole epistles of Paul are 
meaningless if they be regarded simply as re- 
ligious exhortations. These strong-reasoned ar- 
guments, setting forth Christ as the Resurrec- 
tion and the Life, became the missionary watch- 

52 



TEACHING RELIGION 

word with which the Roman Empire was led to 
become Christian. The great epochs in the 
later history of the Church followed the method 
of Christ and of the apostles, in the prominence 
which was given to the teaching ministry. The 
spiritual dynamic of the Reformation was the 
truths of Christ, which became luminous and 
irresistible in the hands of Luther and Melanch- 
thon. The secret of the influence of Calvin was 
not his scheme of statecraft, but the moral 
vitality and vigor of his teaching. The resist- 
less moral passion of the whole Puritan move- 
ment, both in England and in America, sprang 
out of the great truths which were taught by 
the Puritan preacher. The great religious 
awakening in New England, under Jonathan 
Edwards, was the product of his powerful 
though somber preaching of the majestic doc- 
trine of the sovereignty of God. Every popular 
preacher whose influence has been permanent 
has been a teacher of some vital Christian truth 
— John Wesley, of the conscious reality of an 
experience of the things of God; Phillips Brooks, 
of the dignity of the Christian life; Henry Ward 
Beecher, of the love of God. 

53 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

There has never been an era in the history 
of the Christian Church, great in its evangelistic 
enthusiasm, in its missionary spirit, in its re- 
form movements, or in its philanthropic and 
humanitarian enterprises, which has not been 
produced by the clear and strong preaching of 
some one of the great creative truths of Chris- 
tianity. 

We find splendid illustration of the influ- 
ence of the teaching function of the Church in 
the Puritan movement. The reaction from the 
liturgical idea of religion was extreme and revo- 
lutionary, forsaking the cathedral for the wooden 
chapel and humble meeting-house, leaving the 
trappings of the altar for the elaborate sermon 
and the pulpit. The Puritan preachers were 
teachers of the youth, authoritative interpreters 
of religious truth. They sometimes committed 
the blunder of enforcing their ideas by the penal 
code, as in the Massachusetts Theocracy. But 
the worthy task they set for themselves, year 
after year, was the religious instruction of the 
community. Whatever of contempt we may 
heap upon the two and three hour sermons, 
they were dignified and thoughtful presenta- 

54 



TEACHING RELIGION 

tions of religious truth to intelligence, and not 
to mere sentiment or passion. 

There is one feature of the times in which 
we live which makes the teaching function of 
the Church still more important, namely, the 
complete separation of Church and State in our 
country. Practically all religious instruction has 
been dropped from our schools. The early 
American colonies for two hundred years made 
religious education a duty. The doctrines of 
the Church were a part of the curricula of the 
schools. But since 1833 religious education in 
the public schools has been largely abandoned. 
In all the colonies, save Rhode Island, the gov- 
ernment provided for the religious education of 
the youth. Three million copies of "The New 
England Primer" were published for use in the 
schools. But now no definite form of Christian 
instruction is given in the public schools of the 
nation. In many of these schools the simplest 
forms of religious instruction, such as the read- 
ing of the Scriptures and prayer, are prohibited. 
This is the result not of the irreligiousness of 
the American people, as it might at first seem; 
it is rather a compromise which seems necessary 

55 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

on account of the heterogeneous religious make- 
up of our population, including Jews, Roman 
Catholics, and Protestants. At any rate, the 
American people agree that there is to be no 
religious instruction by the State. The result 
in the Protestant population is a very general 
neglect of religious teaching. Here is our peril: 
The State has forbidden religious instruction of 
our youth in the schools, while the Church has 
made no adequate provision for their religious 
training. The result is that there are millions 
of our youth to-day who have practically no 
religious education. And this is the greatest 
national problem which we face. In France 
every Thursday is set apart as a holiday for 
religious instruction of the youth; in Germany 
provision is made for Christian teaching in the 
curricula of the schools and colleges; but in 
America, reverence, obedience to conscience, the 
recognition of God in history and nature, the 
place of Christ in civilization, the value of the 
Bible both for literature and for life, the rela- 
tion of Christianity to other world religions, are 
nowhere taught with any thoroughness. It 
scarcely needs to be said that the teaching of 

56 



TEACHING RELIGION 

these things is far more vital to the character of 
our citizenship and to the future permanence 
and peace of the nation than are our scientific 
studies and patriotic exercises. 

There is still another consideration which 
emphasizes the imperative importance of the 
teaching function of the Christian Church, 
namely, the need of religious instruction for 
the stability and strength of Christian disciple- 
ship. To make converts to Christ and to enroll 
them in the membership of the Church is of 
small consequence, unless they are also taught 
in the truth and duties of the Christian life. 
The popular evangelistic invitation of to-day, 
"Come to Christ," to vast numbers means but 
little. For a man to become a disciple of Henry 
George means his acquaintance with Mr. 
George's principles of taxation and statecraft. 
To say to men, "Follow Tolstoi," means ac- 
ceptance of Tolstoi's scheme of life. But when 
men come to Christ, there is often lacking any 
clear conception of Christ's ideal of life and 
duty, of God, of human society, of the moral 
law, of personal attitude toward business, the 
family, the government, and philanthropy. If 

57 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

Christian discipleship is to be both stable and 
strong, it must be taught what the following of 
Christ involves in these manifold relations. 

Furthermore, the uninstructed religious mind 
of the present is the fertile soil for the growth 
of numberless religious fads— Theosophy, New 
Thought, Christian Scienceism, and various mix- 
tures of superstition, pagan thought and Chris- 
tian teaching. There was never a time when the 
apostolic exhortation, "Be able to give a reason 
for the hope that is within thee," was more per- 
tinent than at the present. The separation of 
Church and State, resulting largely in the 
neglect of religious training of the youth in the 
home > and the reaction from the labored doc- 
trinal preaching of a generation ago, has pro- 
duced a state of religious illiteracy which is 
nothing less than alarming. 

The Church's function, then, is the creation 
and the maintenance of Christian ideals. Men 
must be shown what these ideals are and what 
they demand in thought and conduct. The 
Church must answer by the slow, silent process 
of Christian education the questions which are 
vital to strength of character and peace of mind 

58 



TEACHING RELIGION 

in every generation. For example: How shall 
men conceive of God? How shall they think of 
Christianity? How shall they think of Christ 
as Jesus of Nazareth or as the "strong Son of 
God, Immortal Love?" How shall they think 
of society? How shall they think of life, as 
probation or education, or both? What shall 
be their attitude toward public affairs, toward 
modern culture, toward the reforms of the day? 
What does the Christian spirit require of the 
man of business? What is the Christian view 
of the duties of citizenship? What is the Chris- 
tian attitude toward commerce, toward warfare, 
toward philanthropy, toward the backward 
races? In short, what is the Christian ideal of 
life for our day? To answer that question so as 
to command the intellects and arouse the con- 
sciences of our time is the inexhaustible and 
fascinating task of the Christian minister. 
Shortly after Mr. James Bryce came to this 
country as ambassador from Great Britain, he 
said in a public address: "Who are your poets? 
That is the question for you. Who are writing 
your songs or stirring your hearts? — or is not 
your heart being stirred? Each generation and 

59 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

each land should have its own poets — men of 
lofty thought, who shall dream and sing for it, 
who shall gather up its tendencies and formu- 
late its ideals and voice its spirit, proclaiming 
its duties and awakening its enthusiasm." This 
is a fine characterization of the minister's mis- 
sion. To "dream," to "stir" and "formulate," 
and "voice" and "awaken" and "proclaim" — 
these are the marks of the preacher of Christ. 
To make men see the divine vision, so as to 
stir their consciences, and proclaim with authori- 
tative voice the commands of the higher life, 
and to awaken men toiling in the field of time 
to the sense of the Eternal Presence — this is the 
glorious work of the Christian Church. 

Now this idea of the teaching ministry of 
the Church does not depreciate the inspira- 
tional and evangelistic aspect of its work. Men 
are to be won, they are to be reformed, they are 
to be brought out of the wildest surges of vice 
and despair, they are to be twice-born. But to 
make this work of rescue the only work of the 
Christian Church is to depart from the apostolic 
idea of a teaching ministry, and also to neglect 
a wide and fruitful field of Christian nurture. 

60 



TEACHING RELIGION 

The plea is not for pulpit pedantry, for scho- 
lastic essays, for literary diversions, for aca- 
demic discussions, nor for theological diatribes; 
but for such a presentation of Christ and the 
Resurrection as will make the new-life ideal, 
luminous, and germinant. 

But what is the minister to teach? The 
doctrines of Christianity as interpreted by his 
own Church? Yes, but he is to be more than a 
mere pedagogue in the catechism. Doctrine is 
vital, but he must be more than a mere phono- 
graph in dogma. He is to be the teacher of his 
times, but not a pulpit dabbler in sociology, 
politics, and higher criticism. He is to be a 
teacher of the spiritual views and ideals of life; 
he is to show men how to look at life from the 
Christian viewpoint. He is. to lead them up to 
some clear mountain of vision, whence they can 
see through the mists of materialism and the 
perplexities of human sorrow the light that 
never was on land or sea. The supreme task of 
the teacher-preacher is to give men an abiding 
and permanent sense of moral and spiritual 
values, and to show them the infinite worth- 
whileness of life. 

61 



IV 

The Authority of Christ 

HE most urgent question of religion to-day- 
is the question of religious certainty. Increas- 
ing numbers of the Roman Catholic Church are 
unable to accept the voice of the Church as 
supreme. The Protestant claim for the Bible 
as the final authority in religion, and the Ra- 
tionalist's claim for the reason as the ultimate 
court of appeal, to many are alike untenable in 
theory and unsatisfactory in experience. But 
if the gospel is to command a hearing it must 
come to men with the note of authority. The 
absence of the great "verilys" of Jesus is the 
weakness of much of the Christian teaching of 
the present. With popular confidence shaken 
in the supreme authority of the Church or of 
the Holy Book, the religious mind is asking, 
never so anxiously as to-day, "To whom shall 
we go for the words of eternal life?" 

62 



THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 

The effort in recent years to reconstruct 
theology around Christ as the center is the rec- 
ognition of the mastery of Jesus in the field of 
morals and religion. The popular and much- 
misunderstood cry, "Back to Christ" for the- 
ology and conduct, is profoundly significant as 
a recognition of the centrality and mastership 
of Jesus. Further, it is interesting to note that 
all schools of thought, Radical and Conserva- 
tive, Socialistic and Evangelical, Ritualist and 
Nonconformist, represented by men differing 
as widely as Tolstoi and Peabody, Harnack and 
Stevens, Fairbairn and Bousset, all alike turn 
to Jesus saying, "One is our Master, even 
Christ." And what is this but a recognition of 
the New Testament impression of Jesus? The 
note of authority in Jesus' teaching made a 
mighty impression upon the disciples' minds. 
"Verily, verily, I say unto you," has been re- 
corded by the evangelists more than seventy 
times. The first distinguishing feature of Jesus' 
teaching which the people noticed was the 
authority with which He spoke. 

But the very fact that men representing the 
most extreme views of the personality of Christ 

63 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

recognize His spiritual mastership, indicates the 
need of some clear idea as to the nature and 
sphere of religious authority. 

Fundamental to any intelligent discussion of 
this subject is our conception of the person of 
Jesus. If the claim is made that Jesus is the 
supreme teacher of truth, that He has given to 
the world the final moral ethic, that claim is 
tenable only on the ground of the genuine his- 
toric incarnation of the Son of God. If Jesus 
has spoken the final word for belief and duty 
and destiny, it is because of His unique char- 
acter as the Redeemer. We may rightly claim 
that Christ's teaching surpasses, by infinite dis- 
tances, all other teaching of spiritual things. 
We may justly hold, with John Stuart Mill, that 
there is no higher law of conduct than that 
given in the life of Jesus. But in the strict 
sense there can be no such thing as an external 
authoritative truth-test in the realm of the- 
ology. There can be no authoritative, inflexible 
rules which are adequate for the guidance of 
life. The seat of Christ's authority is to be 
found not in His teaching nor in His ethics 

64 



THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 

alone, but in His redemption. The truth of 
Christianity must have a living test. 

Jesus' unique authority rests, therefore, not 
on the ground of His amazing range of knowl- 
edge, nor on the ground of His intellectual 
genius, in comparison with the philosophers and 
poets of the race; but His supreme authority 
rests on the fact that He is so bound up with 
the highest and best in us that He claims our 
allegiance. It is the authority which rises out 
of the new life. "As many as received Him, to 
them gave He power to become children of 
God." The authority of Christ is the authority 
of the Divine Man who becomes to men the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life. It is not the 
standard of a truth or a system of truths. It 
is not a law embodied or expressed in some his- 
toric institution as its custodian. It is the voice 
of the living, holy God manifesting Himself 
"at one supreme point on Calvary, but throb- 
bing at every other point in human history with 
the compassion of an eternal cross." 

To what then do we make our appeal as we 
turn to the Christ of the New Testament? Not 
5 65 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

alone to the supreme intellectual genius of the 
ages, not alone to a masterful teacher of ethics; 
but to the God-man, to the One whose human 
life received and manifested the divine as fully 
as human life can receive and manifest the 
divine life; not to a double-headed person in a 
dual personality, acting now as man and again 
as God, but to one conscious personality, human 
in all His divineness and divine in all His hu- 
manness. This view of Jesus as the incarna- 
tion of God, restrained within the limits of the 
human, is fundamental to a rational conception 
of His authority. And this at once guides us in 
determining the sphere of Christ's authority. 
The revelation has to do primarily with the 
character of God and the needs and possibilities 
of the human soul. 

The supremacy of Jesus thus interpreted has 
important bearing upon some vital problems. 
One of these is the problem of religious belief. 
What was the character of Christ's teaching 
concerning God? We turn to Him in vain for 
proofs of the divine existence. In His teachings 
there is an utter absence of arguments such as 
Kant and Hegel used. He never deals with the 

66 



THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 

metaphysical side of things. While His whole 
mission was to reveal and attest the reality of 
God, He always approached this sublime truth 
ethically and vitally, and never speculatively. 
He reveals God not by intellectual demonstra- 
tion, but by moral illumination. His utterances 
concerning the Father have the accent of abso- 
lute assurance. But His is not merely an in- 
tellectual certainty. His conviction of God's 
being and character rises out of His pro- 
found communion and spiritual oneness with 
God. The inspiration of the great "verilys" 
of Jesus is not an intellectual act so much as 
personal experience. "Whatsoever the Father 
saith unto Me, I speak," is the testimony 
of One whose knowledge of God comes not 
from reasoning, but from fellowship. Such 
knowledge is not a deduction, but a vision. 
He did not reason about truth. He saw truth. 
Do we wonder at the moral penetration of 
Jesus? Great tracts of divine knowledge, veiled 
to us, seem to lie open to Him. His unbroken 
devotion to the doing of righteousness gave to 
Him a clearness of spiritual vision and a mastery 
of unseen forces which seem utterly beyond us. 

67 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

"I do always the things which are pleasing to 
the Father," is the secret of His vast range of 
spiritual wisdom. Christ sets forth God not as 
an idea, but as a power illuminating, restraining, 
and transforming man. Instead of an intel- 
lectual conception of God, we are given a con- 
scious fellowship. Deeper than any intellectual 
certainty is the assurance which rises out of an 
experience of His power guiding, ruling, and 
sanctifying our life. Christ reveals God neither 
by definitions nor by logical arguments, but by 
quickening our spiritual perceptions, by disclos- 
ing the spiritual realities of our own lives — the 
deeps in man answering the infinite deeps in 
God. 

The impression we get of Christ in the 
Gospels is not of a lecturer giving formal in- 
struction for note-book preservation. Here is 
the Great Teacher, with a perfect vision of God, 
trying, by epigram and parable, by miracle and 
conversation, by every means in His power, to 
make men see God. His teaching lacks bulk, 
but Jesus so packed His words with a few vast 
ideas that they became first luminous, then 
germinant. They are authoritative because they 

68 



THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 

are vital; and the mark of the authority of the 
gospel is that its utterances still throb with a 
dynamic force not unlike the power of Christ 
in Galilee and Jerusalem. 

Here, then, is an authority in the field of 
religious truth which is not chiefly intellectual, 
but vital and experimental. Jesus' matchless 
sayings caused men to wonder, but it was the 
whiteness of His imperial spirit, the perfect 
poise of His character, and the vitalizing and 
transforming power of His life which satisfied 
human longings. His imperatives were rein- 
forced by His own perfect doing of the will of 
God. "Men saw in Him a flawless purity, a 
steadfast purpose of good which never wavered, 
gentleness and a charity which knew no limit." 
His disciples saw that to Him God was the one 
vital reality; that He lived in the abiding con- 
sciousness of the Father; that He wrought no 
work without seeking the Father's guidance; 
that He taught no truth without claiming Him 
as its source; that He met no temptation with- 
out seeking strength from Heaven; that He 
looked upon every disaster as having a place 
in God's wise ordering; that He found in prayer 

69 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

relief and exaltation, and that His matchless 
life drew from a divine communion its beauty 
and glory. 

The supremacy of Christ's teaching, there- 
fore, is to be tested by moral experience. Jesus' 
appeal to every man is primarily not to the 
intellectual judgment, but to the moral sense 
through personal obedience. "If any man will- 
eth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching 
whether it be of God." 

Christ rests His gospel upon the satisfaction 
which it gives to the mind of man who obeys 
its truth. He never seems anxious to fortify 
His teaching by intellectual bulwarks or mirac- 
ulous wonders. His appeal is to living experi- 
ence. "If any man cometh unto Me, the water 
that I shall give him shall be in him a well of 
water springing up into eternal life." If the 
gospel stands it will be because it satisfies, and 
satisfies forever, the men who will to do the 
will of God. If the gospel ceases to satisfy the 
lives of men by its discovery to them of spiritual 
peace and power, no defense of argument or 
regime of miracles could preserve it in the con- 
fidence of a single generation of men. But 

70 



THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 

while human nature remains what it is, with its 
deeply-imbedded moral instinct, with its long- 
ing to see God, which is awakened by Jesus' 
presence, Christ, and Christ alone, is eternally 
the way to the Father. 

Another vital question upon which the 
authority of Christ sheds important light is the 
problem of personal conduct. More and more 
men are seeking practical guidance in duty by 
asking "What would Jesus do?" The authority 
of Jesus' teaching is being invoked in support 
of Tolstoi's theory of non-resistance, and the 
latest socialistic and communistic scheme, as 
well as the most ascetic ideals of personal living. 
Are Jesus' commands general in their form and 
universal in their application? Are they to be 
interpreted literally as absolute commands for 
the regulation of the details of personal con- 
duct? Or is the application of His teaching 
affected by changing conditions of life? Take, 
for example, His instruction concerning alms- 
giving: "Give to him that asketh thee, and 
from him that would borrow of thee, turn thou 
not away." This teaching was given before 
there was any organized system of charity. 

71 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

Urgent cases of human need must be relieved, 
and in order to provide this relief Jesus sought 
to inculcate the spirit of charity and of brotherly 
sympathy. But under the different social con- 
ditions of the present day, with our great num- 
ber of philanthropies thoroughly organized, with 
an entirely different economic system from that 
which existed in Jesus' day, the carrying out of 
Jesus' command requires a very different course 
of action from that required in His time. 
In other words, the pithy, epigrammatical say- 
ings of Jesus can not be converted into articu- 
lated and complete systems of law for human 
society. His teaching is like a great search- 
light, revealing here and there distinct glimpses 
of the landscape, but unrelated and discon- 
nected. They must be interpreted always from 
the standpoint of the great, loving heart, and 
not used as the measurement of a social system 
or of a hard-and-fast scheme of life. His strong 
and sparkling utterances were not intended as 
a contribution either to a sociological scheme 
or a theological system of doctrine, but as 
a vitalizing power in moral experience." The 
mark of Christ's supreme authority in the field 

72 



THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 

of conduct is that He made men feel that they 
must be like Him, and that they must do the 
works of God. 

The commandments of Jesus, taken as posi- 
tive rules or legal injunctions to do this or to 
do that, are in no sense an adequate solution of 
the problem of conduct. Life is too vast, duties 
are too complex for rules made into fixed forms. 

To raise the question, then, "What would 
Jesus do?" as an infallible guide for the purpose 
of securing authoritative guidance in the par- 
ticular forms of our duty, is not enough. To be 
sure, the very asking of that question brings 
one into the presence of the Lord, and confronts 
him with the supreme revelation of God in 
man, and renews the call of his forgotten ideals. 
To imagine Jesus in the midst of the experiences 
of our human life at once presents to us "an 
image of all that is divinest in humanity, whether 
in work or in suffering." But the question, What 
would Jesus do? has no significance for us as a 
practical guide, except as it means, What is 
Christ's will for us? And what His will for us 
may be depends upon personal conditions. 1 We 

1 Cf. Forrest, "The Authority of Christ," pages 171-189. 

73 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

may not hope to solve the perplexing problem 
of personal conduct by projecting Christ im- 
aginatively into our experience, with His differ- 
ent surroundings and His unique religious mis- 
sion in the world; but rather by asking what 
loyalty to Christ requires of us, with our specific 
work and condition. The supreme duty of 
Christian discipleship is not slavish imitation of 
Jesus, but "loyalty to Him in spirit in the un- 
trodden paths of life." The one necessity is that 
we should be conscious of fidelity at every step 
to the authority of the Christ-life. And Christ 
reveals Himself to us ever more fully as we fol- 
low on to obey Him. This mighty impulse to 
obey Christ, impossible though it seems at 
times, goes hand in hand with increasing knowl- 
edge of the Divine Will until, in adoring wonder, 
we exclaim with Paul, "Now unto Him who is 
able to do exceeding abundantly above all we 
ask or even think, unto Him be glory." 

Another important inquiry is concerning the 
application of the authority of Jesus to the 
larger social problems. As civilization becomes 
more complex in its forms, the questions of 
social duty grow more perplexing. What does 

74 



THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 

the kingship of Christ in society demand? Of 
course, it demands of the ruler or office-holder 
that he shall be controlled always in his official 
duties by the spirit of loyalty to the will of 
Christ. To submit to the authority of Christ 
in the State means simply to bring political 
action to the test of the ethical standard which 
grows up out of the Christian faith. We can 
not claim the authority of Christ for any par- 
ticular form of government or for any political 
policy. We may insist, under all forms of gov- 
ernment and in all policies, upon the funda- 
mental demands of Christ for justice, purity, 
and kindness. We can neither rule out nor 
establish the right of the labor union by an ap- 
peal to the authority of Christ. The question is 
in no wise illuminated by speculating as to 
whether Jesus would be a labor unionist. The 
only pertinent question is: Under existing in- 
dustrial conditions, does this organization pro- 
mote the welfare of men and foster the spirit of 
Christ? Any rational appeal, then, to the su- 
preme authority of Jesus in society is nothing 
more or less than a serious effort to bring every 
political action and every social organization to 

75 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

the ethical test of the Christian faith, and to 
embody, wherever possible, the highest concep- 
tion of justice and mercy. We can not make a 
nation Christian by putting the Golden Rule 
into the constitution, nor by stamping the 
nation's coin with "In God We Trust." If we 
should christen a political party "The Christian 
Party," and put the Sermon on the Mount into 
its platform, we should still make no adequate 
recognition of the supreme headship of Jesus 
Christ. The authority of Christ must be in- 
voked in the sphere of motive and ideal, and not 
in the sphere of policy and method. These 
must be adapted to meet intelligently the ever- 
changing conditions of human society. 

Now exactly the same principle applies to all 
matters of ecclesiastical government and polity. 
How utterly barren is the endless discussion 
concerning divine authority for various orders 
of the ministry, and for various modes of Church 
administration, when we discover that Christ is 
not a divider of ecclesiastical honors, but that 
He came that we might have more abundant 
life. Any form of Church government — congre- 
gational, presbyterial, or episcopal — that intelli- 

76 



THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 

gently serves the ends of the spiritual kingdom 
has upon it the seal of the supreme Christ. 

It may be said that unless we have some in- 
fallible external authority, giving an unchang- 
ing standard of belief and duty, we have no 
safeguard for the Christian faith. It must be 
remembered, however, that the voice of the 
Church, and even the "Thou shalt" of Holy 
Scripture, give no sure guarantee of the future 
of the Christian faith, except as these holy 
voices are vindicated in the living experience of 
men. This is the living test of Christianity: 
that it approves itself from generation to gen- 
eration to the highest and best in men. Hu- 
manity continues to bow before Jesus Christ as 
King of kings and Lord of lords, because the 
eternal truth which He revealed in an historic 
life is perpetually undergoing reinterpretation, 
and with every fresh interpretation proving 
itself to be spirit and life. 

In a word, then, the authority of Christ is 
not mechanical or external, it is vital. It is the 
authority of assured Christian experience. Life 
is the final source of all authority — Christian 
life — the life begotten of Christ, inspired by 

77 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

Christ, and completed in Christ. Beliefs and 
doctrines, rules and laws, in so far as they help 
to produce Christian experience, may be said 
to bear the authority of Christ. The one unes- 
capable and irrefutable fact is the living Christ, 
the ultimate authority both for truth and con- 
duct. And the test of the authority is the life 
which He produces. He comes and men have 
life, and life is the final witness for religious 
authority. 



78 



The Mission of the Prophet of 
God 



I 



N the old book of Deuteronomy there is a 
suggestive account of Moses' call to the work of 
a prophet. Moses hears the people's voice, 
"Go thou near and hear all that the Lord our 
God shall speak unto thee, and we will hear it 
and do it." This ancient cry of the people for 
one who would interpret to them the truth of 
God is at the same time the latest appeal, for 
this incident of early Hebrew history is true to 
human experience in every age. Right down 
through the centuries humanity has been call- 
ing for some one to go apart from the ways of 
men and receive God's message, and then de- 
clare it to the people. The function of the 
ancient prophet was to speak for God. He was 
to give a religious interpretation of life; he was 

79 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

to set in a spiritual light the duties of business 
and of politics and of society; he was to make 
men see the Infinite in the affairs of the earth; 
he was to keep alive in the consciences of men 
their responsibility to God. 

And this is always the supreme function of 
the prophet of God. He is to be the voice of 
God to the men of his time; he is to translate 
his experience of God into the thought of his 
time; he is to proclaim the spiritual ideals of 
life; he is to be the interpreter of the moral law; 
he is to rediscover to his generation the ever- 
lasting foundations of religion. In short, the 
prophet is to stand in the holy place and him- 
self know God, and then come forth to make 
God known to men. He is to be a teacher of 
truth, but always teaching the truths that will 
serve the moral ends of life. His object is not 
to teach truth for its own sake, but to create 

♦ righteous character; to reproduce in men's lives 
in the twentieth century the spirit of the Man 
of Galilee in the first century, and to make men 

. see the glory of righteousness. With the moral 
ideals aflame in his own mind, he is to stir men's 
consciences and to set them to the task of build- 

80 



MISSION OF THE PROPHET OF GOD 

ing up in the earth the kingdom of righteous- 
ness, the republic of God. 

There is no finer illustration of the mission 
of the prophet in modern times than is to be 
found in John Wesley. Truly, he was a man 
sent from God with a message to his age. 

It is unfortunate that John Wesley is known 
to-day chiefly as the founder of a great ecclesi- 
astical system. Emerson has said, "An institu- 
tion is only the lengthened shadow of a man." 
But the shadow has become so lengthened and 
the Methodism of to-day so different from the 
Methodism of Wesley, that his form stands 
before us in dim outline. He seems like a half 
mythical founder of a religious denomination — 
about as real to us to-day as Romulus was to 
the Roman Empire. 

John Wesley was a man of the times and for 
the times. To appreciate the character of his 
ministry, we must look at him with the 
eighteenth century as a background. It was the 
age of Pitt, Burke, and Fox. It was an era of 
intellectual activity, but of spiritual barrenness. 
The Church had lost its moral leadership. 
James Hamilton's dismal picture was not exag- 
6 81 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

gerated: "Never had a century arisen in Eng- 
land so void of soul and faith. It rose as a sun- 
less dawn, following upon a dewless night. 
There was no freshness in the past, and no 
promise in the future. The Puritans were buried 
and the Methodists were not born." The phi- 
losopher of the age was Bolingbroke, brilliant in 
skepticism, more brilliant in intrigue and vice. 
Pope was the popular poet. Walpole was the 
statesman; a "veneered old pagan, an adept in 
vulgarity, and a devotee of the bottle and the 
table." Chesterfield, the social leader of the 
age, instructed his own son in the art of seduc- 
tion as a part of a polished gentleman's educa- 
tion. The writings of the times could be pub- 
lished to-day only in expurgated editions. It 
was an age of unbounded extravagance, with a 
mad passion for material splendor and vicious 
pleasures. Gambling was an almost universal 
practice. Lords and ladies were experts in all 
sorts of knavery. Drunkenness prevailed every- 
where. The lower classes aped the follies and 
vices of the court, and there had grown up a 
vicious, turbulent, heathen class, which a cor- 
rupt government was powerless to restrain and 



MISSION OF THE PROPHET OF GOD 

a formal Church had no disposition to convert. 
The intelligent, thriving middle class were skep- 
tical and irreligious. The times were ripe for 
the terrors of a French Revolution. There was 
no moral leadership in the Church. It was the 
subservient tool of a corrupt State. A pure 
priest of religion could not hold his place. There 
was neither room nor audience for priest or 
bishop in the Church of England who would 
preach and practice religion. The Dissenting 
Churches had become cold and formal. The 
sermons of the times were insipid, moral essays, 
too weak to make men think, too cowardly to 
make them repent. Religion had become an 
empty form or a lifeless dogma. Skepticism was 
widespread, and belief in divine power in the 
lives of men was almost dead. The work of the 
Holy Spirit upon the hearts of men was called 
an idle dream. Religion had lost its divine pas- 
sion and had no energy for saving men. It was 
into this dismal age, with a corrupt State, with 
society of every rank honeycombed with vice 
and crime, with a Church whose clergy were 
preaching dead dogmas and leading idle, disso- 
lute lives, that John Wesley was born. 

83 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

John Wesley's preaching was the biggest 
factor in the moral reformation and social re- 
construction of the eighteenth century. When 
we consider how his message quickened into new 
life the Church of England; when we consider 
that the doctrines which he preached have be- 
come the central message of all Protestant 
Christian denominations, and that he became 
the founder of the largest Protestant body of the 
New World; that he broke the spiritual slumber 
of a skeptical and dissolute age; that he awakened 
English colliers and cavaliers alike to the pres- 
ence of God; that he was the leader in a revival 
of true religion which saved the nation from the 
horrors of a social earthquake, and that he was 
the pioneer in the great philanthropies which 
are the glory of the twentieth century — when 
we consider these things, the words of Carlyle 
sound like sober truth, when he declared that 
John Wesley wielded more influence in the 
world than any of his great contemporaries, 
William Pitt, the Duke of Wellington, or Na- 
poleon Bonaparte. 

What manner of man was this? What was 
his message? What was the secret of his power? 

84 



MISSION OF THE PROPHET OF GOD 

He was not a great writer like Goethe. He was 
not a profound theologian like Athanasius and 
Augustine. He was not a great scholar like 
Melanchthon. But as a prophet of God, making 
real to men spiritual things and awakening the 
Christ-enthusiasm for humanity, he is without 
a peer since the days of Paul. He so combined 
the practical genius of the Anglo-Saxon with an 
all-compelling sense of the reality of religious 
experience and an apostolic passion for saving 
men, that for a quarter of a century he exerted 
a greater influence in England than any other 
man. 

But John Wesley's influence was due pri- 
marily not to his masterful genius and the 
magnitude of his beneficent labors, but rather 
to his intense earnestness, to his spotless char- 
acter, to his powerful, grasp on the realities of 
Christian life, and to his vital message. 

Now what of Wesley's message? It was the 
gospel of early Christianity, vitalized and colored 
by his own experience. His own incomparable 
words point us to the exhaustless fountain of 
his preaching and work: "About a quarter be- 
fore nine, while one was describing the change 

85 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

which God works in the heart by faith in Christ, 
I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did 
trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my salvation, 
and an assurance was given me that He had 
taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me 
from the law of sin and death." His was the 
apostolic message of the love of the living God, 
the incarnation of the Son of God, full redemp- 
tion through the cross, the assurance of faith, 
and immortality through union with Jesus 
Christ. This was the triumphant message of 
Wesley, which converted brutal and degraded 
sinners by thousands, and which rolled back the 
rising tide of atheism, and did more for the 
social "amelioration of England than all the 
mechanical inventions and legislative devices of 
a century." Voltaire, with his perpetual sneer, 
said, "We have never pretended to enlighten 
shoemakers and servants." John Wesley, with 
his everlasting affirmation of spiritual birth, 
made miners and plowboys priests unto God. 
Wesley brought the fundamental truths of 
Christianity out of the cloister and set them on 
the highways of the common people. What 
Emerson did for culture in making it vital and 

86 



MISSION OF THE PROPHET OF GOD 

putting it within the reach of common flesh, 
John Wesley did for religion. "He brought the 
highest truths out of the Church and set them 
on foot and on horseback, and the poor colliers 
of England walked in their light." He preached 
no new doctrine. He gave to the Church no 
great intellectual principle, such as produced the 
Reformation. But he did what was none the 
less important; he breathed into old truths a 
new spirit and made them electric with life. 
His appeal was primarily not to the intellect, 
but to the conscience and the wills of men. His 
aim was not to change men's opinions by the 
power of argument, but to change their lives by 
the power of God. In a time of prevailing skep- 
ticism and irreligion he made religion vital by 
bringing men face to face with God. 

The first distinguishing thing in the preach- 
ing of Wesley was its positive note. He preached 
the fundamental doctrines of our holy religion 
with a certainty of conviction born of personal 
experience. The conquering power of his gospel 
was, first and foremost of all, the positive proc- 
lamation of the great basal truths of apostolic 
Christianity, the vital reality of religious expe- 

87 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

rience, the imperative need of spiritual birth 
from above, the assurance of divine forgiveness, 
Jesus Christ the perfect revelation of God to 
men, the life of Christ in the life of men — the 
one ultimate authority for Christian faith and 
conduct, the certainty of sin's punishment, and 
the blessedness of a life of righteousness. His 
was an evangelical rather than a merely ethical 
gospel. He did not proclaim a redemption by 
sanitation, fresh air, and free libraries. The 
glory of Wesley's gospel is, that out of a living 
experience he gave to the common people a 
vision of the mighty Son of God, standing still 
on the earth, making all things new. You never 
fail to hear in the sermons of John Wesley a 
clear, strong message of hope and salvation to 
all men. 

Another characteristic of the preaching of 
Wesley is his fine sense of intellectual perspective. 
He never made the disastrous blunder of put- 
ting the secondary and non-essential things in 
the place of the primary and vital. Scholarly 
in habit, he never became a religious doctri- 
naire. He had the insight to see that truth is 
not an end in itself, but that any doctrine is 

88 



MISSION OF THE PROPHET OF GOD 

valuable only as it quickens and nourishes in 
men the divine life. And out of this fine sense 
of doctrinal perspective came his breadth. He 
preached the fundamental doctrines of Chris- 
tianity with positiveness, and yet he was always 
tolerant of the honest conviction of those who 
differed from him. He was liberal without being 
loose. He did not belong to that milk-and- 
water class of minds that do not believe any- 
thing with vigor, lest they may be counted 
bigoted. John Wesley has often been charged 
with narrowness and intolerance. But never 
was there a mind more open to truth, and at 
the same time more tenacious of belief. He 
says: "I have no right to object to a man 
because he wears a wig and I wear my own hair; 
but if he takes his wig off and shakes the powder 
in my eyes, I shall consider it my duty to get 
quit of him as soon as possible." He was broad 
enough not to exclude any man from the fellow- 
ship of Christ because of what that man be- 
lieved. He expressed the hope that he should 
see the arch-heretics of Christendom, Montanus 
and Pelagius and Servetus, with the great 
pagans, Socrates and Plato and Marcus Aure- 

89 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

lius, sitting down together in the Kingdom of 
God. Among the religious leaders of all ages 
there is not one who surpasses John Wesley in 
true liberality in belief and in broad catholicity. 

There is still another important character- 
istic of the preaching of John Wesley, his spir- 
itual passion for the salvation and service of 
men. It was this which awakened in the modern 
world the Christ-enthusiasm for humanity which 
has been the inspiration of the noble philan- 
thropies of our day. In the history of the rise 
to power of the common people and of the great 
humane movements of modern times, sufficient 
credit has never yet been given to John Wesley, 
the gospel preacher, pushing from town to town, 
from village to village, yea, and from house to 
house, preaching the good tidings of the gospel. 

It was this that created a new order of com- 
mon people out of the very dregs of English 
society, which to-day is the strength of the 
nation. It was this that awakened public sym- 
pathy for the oppressed and set on foot a prac- 
tical ministry to the needs of society. It was his 
incarnation of the Christian conscience which 
ushered in an era of reform. The murderous 

90 



MISSION OF THE PROPHET OF GOD 

penal laws of England were repealed. Under 
the inspiration of John Wesley the work of 
prison reform was inaugurated by John Howard. 
The rights of the laborer were protected by 
legislation. Several years before Robert Raikes, 
John Wesley had laid the foundation of the 
modern Sunday school movement. The last let- 
ter which he penned was a letter of encourage- 
ment to William Wilberforce in his struggle 
against the African slave trade. But this is 
not all. His own ministry was a masterly or- 
ganized system of social service. He was the 
pioneer in the effort to supply the people with 
cheap, wholesome literature, giving to the press 
from his own hand three hundred and seventy- 
one publications, two-thirds of which sold for 
less than a shilling, and a quarter of which sold 
for a penny. He established the first dispensary; 
he provided a loan fund for those in temporary 
need; he organized Strangers' Relief Societies, 
which are still perpetuated by the present sys- 
tem of charity in England; and, above all, he 
gave to the modern world its missionary im- 
pulse to give the gospel of Christ to the whole 
world. 

91 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

Whence did this splendid ministry in the 
eighteenth century, with the power of God for 
political, social, and moral salvation, come? It 
was a gospel of positive doctrine, springing out 
of a vital Christian experience. It was a gospel 
of hope and salvation, preached with full knowl- 
edge of the times, with the intellectual focus 
and spiritual insight which put into the fore- 
ground the great outstanding facts of redemp- 
tion, and into the background the petty theories 
and speculations of men. It was the gospel of 
the cross preached with Calvary's passion for 
men. 



92 



VI 

The Preaching for the Times 

JL HE great outstanding features in the min- 
istry of Wesley must be reproduced in the preach- 
ing of the present-day Church. There must be 
in the effective preaching of this and of every 
age a clear, strong note of positive doctrine and 
of religious certainty, born of a personal experi- 
ence of the things of God. Why should Mr. 
Begbie's "Twice-Born Men" and "Souls in 
Action" create such a sensation, unless there is 
a suspicion gnawing at the hearts of many that 
the gospel has lost something of its former 
power? Why should the new theology and doc- 
trinal reconstruction and creed revision be so 
much in the air, if the note of religious authority 
were not lost in many a Christian pulpit? There 
is no concealing the fact that the confidence of 
a certain faith is gone out of much of our 
preaching. 

93 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

What has happened? We can not blind our- 
selves to the fact that a century of inquiry has 
made important changes in religious thinking. 
There has been a tremendous inrush of knowl- 
edge; the world has been vastly enlarged, and 
the religious mind has been trying to adjust 
itself to this roomier universe. The bounds of 
history have been pushed back to a time so 
remote as to be bewildering; the earth has been 
taken out of the center of the sky and set in an 
obscure part of the universe of worlds; a million 
facts which men did not know before have 
poured in upon us, and the minds of many are 
bewildered. A modern scholar has made the 
statement that probably more new facts re- 
garding the physical world have been discovered 
in the last seventy-five years than during the 
previous seventy-five hundred years. Professor 
Wallace, in his thrilling book, "The Story of 
the Wonderful Century," claims that thirteen 
great inventions or discoveries were made dur- 
ing the nineteenth century, and only seven in 
all the centuries before. 

This new knowledge which is brought to us 
94 



THE PREACHING FOR THE TIMES 

by geologist and astronomer, by archaeologist 
and biologist, has created a great disturbance in 
our ethical and religious values. How do these 
new facts relate themselves to the teaching of 
the Bible, to the Christian doctrine of sin, of 
forgiveness, of prayer, of conversion, of a Divine 
Savior, and of the immortal life? In the midst 
of the intellectual confusion and doctrinal be- 
wilderment, be it ever remembered that not a 
single fact of Christian experience has been in- 
validated, not a single fundamental doctrine of 
our holy faith overthrown. But be it also re- 
membered that fidelity to the truth preached by 
the fathers is one thing, and servility to the 
forms in which they preached it is another 
thing. Their forms of statement may have 
been the best for their day, but they are not 
adequate for ours. We can not force upon 
men's minds to-day the thumb-worn creeds of 
the eighteenth century. The facts of Christian 
experience are the same now as then; but you 
can not make the same appeal to men to-day 
that was made fifty or one hundred years ago, 
and carry conviction. Fidelity to the old truths, 

95 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

without servility to the old forms of truth, is 
the spirit in which the Church must conquer in 
the twentieth century. 

Now, in the face of the intellectual inquiry 
and the prevailing religious unrest, what is the 
duty of the Christian minister? To study the 
signs of the times; to know the findings of the 
scholars; to welcome the truth, from whatever 
source it may come, in fullest confidence that 
the vitality of the Divine Word and the need of 
the human heart will safeguard the truth for- 
ever. If there is some light on the great doc- 
trines of religion to-day which makes a stronger 
appeal to life, we want the larger truth in the 
interest of the larger life. If some new light is 
shed upon the Old Book by the discoveries of 
the archaeologists or by the literary and his- 
torical study of the Bible by the scholars, we 
want the larger truth in the interest of the larger 
life. For we may be assured the cause of Chris- 
tian faith is never in peril from the truth. 

These changes in the intellectual outlook and 
in the social atmosphere have simply laid upon 
the Christian preacher the obligation of mediat- 
ing his message to his age. To do this requires 

96 



THE PREACHING FOR THE TIMES 

intellectual perspective. The preacher must set 
in the foreground the things which are fore- 
most — the great essentials of Christian faith 
and conduct. He must estimate the religious 
values of all truths by their power to create and 
sustain in men spiritual life. The training of 
the schools ought to give to the Christian min- 
ister a hospitality toward all truth, a viewpoint 
which will make him the sympathetic teacher of 
his age, and give to him the insight to discrimi- 
nate between the essentials and the non-essen- 
tials. His is the high task of leading the doubt- 
bewildered minds of men, who are confusing 
higher criticism with a living word of God, who 
substitute a theory of the atonement for a vision 
of the redeeming cross, and who identify the 
acceptance of a creed with personal loyalty to 
the Master. In other words, ours is the people's 
ancient charge to Moses of hearing for others: 
"Go thou near and hear all that the Lord our 
God shall speak unto thee, and we will hear it 
and do it." The prophet of God standing in the 
holy place to hear God's revelation, and then 
coming down from the mount of vision to medi- 
ate the truth and grace of God forever — that 
7 97 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

is the awful, the gloriously majestic function of 
the Christian preacher. 

That is the preaching for the times. For 
"the freshest thing that any man can give to 
the world — and what the world still yearns, 
with an unutterable longing, to hear, is the 
word of God spoken in the preacher's own 
soul," in the language and forms of thought 
which men know — and this is the task of the 
Christian preacher. Ruskin observes that if 
you were to cut a square inch out of Turner's 
sky, you would find the Infinite in it. So, to 
portray real life to men, that they shall see the 
Infinite in it, is the supreme objective in Chris- 
tian preaching. 

And here emerges the great practical intel- 
lectual task of modern Christianity. The very 
titles of recent books on religious subjects indi- 
cate the serious conviction of religious thinkers 
that the truth of Christ must be translated into 
living thought-forms and applied to the vital 
needs of the present day. 

A Wesley an minister writes a book on "The 
Historic Christ in the Faith of To-day;" a 
bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church sends 

98 



THE PREACHING FOR THE TIMES 

out a volume on "A Valid Christianity for To- 
day;" "Things Fundamental" is the title of a 
book by an American Congregational minister; 
"The Gospel and the Modern Man" is from 
the pen of a Western college professor; a popu- 
lar preacher and author has written a book on 
"The Gospel for An Age of Doubt;" the presi- 
dent of a leading theological school has pub- 
lished a volume on "The Social Message and 
the Modern Pulpit." These titles indicate the 
serious effort that is being made to mediate the 
truths of Christianity to our day. President 
Faunce is right: "The Puritan meeting-house 
in an Indian jungle would be an anomaly, but 
no more anomalous than the Athanasian Creed 
in Calcutta." Now the Athanasian Creed may 
be true in Calcutta, but it is not the truth in 
the form that will appeal to the Oriental mind. 
Doctor Charles Cuthbert Hall, in his "Christian 
Belief Interpreted by Christian Experience," 
well says: "He who, confident in Western tra- 
dition, ignores the differentia of Eastern think- 
ing, and preaches Christian truth to the subtle 
students of Allahabad precisely in the terms to 
be employed at Oxford or Harvard, while he 

99 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

may interest a few who may have become Euro- 
peanized in their thinking, runs the risk of re- 
maining unintelligible to the many whose intel- 
lectual presuppositions have almost nothing in 
common with his own." 

What, then, is the gospel for our age? It 
is the gospel of the Son of God, with its essen- 
tial message translated into the thought-forms 
of the present day. Just as the apostles preached 
Christianity in the vernacular of their time, so 
the Church to-day must seize the dominant 
conceptions of the age and pour its timeless 
truth into them. The problem of the preacher 
is how "to translate the things of eternity into 
the vocabulary of time." In other words, in 
the fine phrase of William Adams Brown, "The 
Christian spirit must make for itself a home in 
the existing intellectual environment of every 
age." The changes in men's thinking have not 
invalidated a single fact of Christian experi 
ence. The Christian fundamentals rise out of 
and are to be interpreted by the living experi- 
ence of men who know God through His Son, 
Jesus Christ. And this may be said to be the 
philosophy underlying the historic creeds of 

100 



THE PREACHING FOR THE TIMES 

Christendom. They are simply the intellectual 
effort of Christian believers to translate Christ 
and His message into forms of thought intelli- 
gible to their own time. Some of the creeds 
would undoubtedly have been unintelligible to 
the original twelve apostles. They are alike un- 
meaning to the average reader to-day; simply 
because we are thinking in different forms, we 
have a different intellectual atmosphere from 
the centuries in which the historic creeds of the 
Church were formulated, And the translation 
of the Christian message must go on, so long 
as the mind of man continues to widen its 
outlook and strengthen its grasp on truth. 

The Church of our day needs to return to 
its old-time emphasis upon the divine reality of 
personal Christian experience. The scientific 
fad of our day applied to matters of the spirit is 
the old-fashioned doctrine of assurance or cer- 
tainty through personal Christian experience. 
And it is this note of positiveness in spiritual 
things for which the world is waiting, and never 
so eagerly as now. The note of moral and 
spiritual authority must be heard again in the 
Christian Church. Men must hear from the pul- 

101 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

pit the great spiritual verities of life which com- 
mand the intellect and grip the conscience. 
Unless this age of doubt hears a positive mes- 
sage which warrants believers in saying, "I 
know Him whom I have believed," "We know 
we have passed from death unto life," men will 
not heed our preaching. The need of our time is 
for a gospel that is rock-ribbed with the sublime 
dogmas of Christianity. And "unless a preacher 
knows some things with certainty and can preach 
them dogmatically, he has no right to preach." 
It is becoming increasingly evident that our age 
will not hear the preaching of a man who can 
not speak "the great truths of divine reve- 
lation in accents which do not waver, and with 
an emphasis which burns with fervent heat." 
The time-spirit calls upon the Christian min- 
ister to-day to emphasize the primacy of spir- 
itual experience. We make a great mistake 
when we conclude that the people of our time 
want to hear only a gospel of human brother- 
hood and the Golden Rule. There is only one 
message that catches the ear and changes the 
heart of scholar and outcast alike, and that is 
Christ and Him crucified. 

102 



THE PREACHING FOR THE TIMES 

Again, the opinions or speculations which 
have grown up around the gospel do not lend 
themselves to the experimental method and to 
positive preaching. Our theory of the atone- 
ment or of the inspiration of the Bible, and other 
speculations more or less valuable, can not be 
brought to the test of living experience. And 
so we do well to stress those things which appeal 
to living experience — the reality of the experi- 
ence of twice-born men, the certainty of the 
divine forgiveness, Jesus Christ the perfect rev- 
elation of God to men, the word and life of 
Jesus Christ incarnate afresh in every genera- 
tion — the one ultimate authority for Christian 
faith and conduct, the terrible reality and guilt 
of sin, the certainty of sin's punishment, the 
blessedness of a life of righteousness. "These 
are the outcroppings of the eternal granite on 
which the universe stands. And blessed is the 
preacher who plants his foot on these." This is 
the very heart of the gospel, and it is to-day the 
power of God unto salvation. 

But in every age there are certain dominant 
conceptions which must shape the preaching of 
the Church. In order to give men the Living 

103 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

Bread instead of a stone, a vision of Jesus 
Christ instead of a theological proposition, the 
minister must know the trend of human think- 
ing in his day. He must have the Zeitgeist on 
his side. 

What are the ruling ideas which must shape 
the preaching of our day? 

First: The aliveness of the world. The dom- 
inant idea of physical science is that there is 
going on everywhere a process of unfolding and 
development at whose very center is living in- 
telligence and will. The whole physical world 
is not a dead mass of matter, but is "shot 
through with mind in every particle, and every 
atom is palpitating with energy." One idea 
rules in the world of nature, science, education, 
philanthropy, religion; that idea is an endless 
unfolding process. The consequence is that re- 
ligious truth must not be handled as if it were 
a jewel to be kept in a casket, but rather as seed 
to be planted in faith. This will make the the- 
ology of every age a vital thing. If we can say 
to the eager and alert minds, gazing in wonder 
at the marvels of science, "You are to see still 
greater wonders in religion; there is to be a pro- 

104 



THE PREACHING FOR THE TIMES 

gressive apprehension of God's presence in the 
world," then men are ready to hear. But if we 
try to set forth the religion of Christ in the 
mathematical and mechanical conceptions of an 
earlier day, our effort is doomed to failure, be- 
cause men to-day are thinking in the terms of 
life and growth. 

Another ruling idea of the present is the 
universal dominion of law. The very outposts 
of creation are claimed to be in the domain of 
physical law. Chance has been exiled; lawless- 
ness everywhere is inconceivable. Men are look- 
ing for progress under universal law. And with 
all the riotous excess to which the idea of "the 
reign of law" has run, it remains true that the 
mightiest sanctions ever given to the moral law 
are found in the facts of heredity and of rever- 
sion to type. The thunderings of Sinai and the 
hell-fire of Dante are not so terrible as the 
penalty of wrong-doing which is seen to be in- 
evitable in the poisoning of our own blood, in 
the corruption of our own nature, and in the 
telltale marks upon our children. In Emerson's 
phrase, "When we see crime and punishment 
growing out of one stem, we have conceptions 

105 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

of heaven and hell that are deepened by infi- 
nite depths." Instead of the Christian heaven 
being a kind of appendage to earthly goodness, 
it is seen to be the inevitable outcome of good- 
ness that is growing and climbing forever. This 
dominant thought of our time, the universal 
dominion of law, can be used by the Christian 
preacher with tremendous force in preaching 
the essential doctrines of Christianity. 

There is a third conception which dominates 
modern life: That is, the practical test of truth 
is experience. This is the laboratory method 
which prevails everywhere in the sciences. 
Does it work? Will it bear the test of life? 
These are the questions which are incessantly 
put to every theorist, teacher, and preacher. 
And this is the historic appeal of Christianity. 
"Come and see" was the challenge of Jesus to 
the first inquiries concerning His Messiahship. 
"Come and see a man that told me all things 
that ever I did. Is this not the Christ?" "Be- 
lieve not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether 
they are of God." This is the method to which 
our age has given its allegiance, the method of 

106 



THE PREACHING FOR THE TIMES 

experiment, the laboratory test applied to spir- 
itual things. 

But far more important than the intellectual 
setting of the truth is the attitude of the preacher 
toward his message. Does he think of himself 
primarily as the exponent and defender of the 
doctrines of his denomination, as the inter- 
preter of certain religious beliefs, or as the herald 
to the men of his day of the love and power and 
presence of the living God? Is it the great all- 
pervading conviction of his mind and heart that 
God lives and moves in the earth, brooding 
over human lives with everlasting love? The 
heresy of our time which is paralyzing the pul- 
pit and deadening the pew, is the belief in the 
"God that was" The master truth which we 
are to preach to this age is, "Our God was and 
is, and is to come." In your familiar garden 
you may hear His voice in the cool of the day. 
In your fields you may see the bush that burns 
and is not consumed. In the faces upon which 
you look you may see shining the light of the 
glory of God. On your mountains and plains 
you may see the horsemen and the chariots of 

107 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

God's Israel. Over the heads of men and 
women in the upper room till this very day 
there is still to be seen the flame of fire. In the 
striking words of a modern thinker, "The Bible 
is not the story of a vanished splendor, the 
melancholy memorial of departed powers. It is 
the revelation of powers that now play about 
us, victories that now may be won, and a life 
which in every nation, every age, may be lived 
by faith in 'the strong Son of God— Immortal 
Love.' " O prophets of the truth, you are to 
study the temper of the time, and come forth 
in the presence of the Eternal Spirit with a 
message for every mood and for every man. 
You are to be citizens of two worlds. Remem- 
ber, that if you are to minister to the pres- 
ent age your preaching must have in it the 
heroic note. If you would put to flight the 
armies of aliens you must believe profoundly in 
God, in the eternal meaning and consequence 
of every little life, in the supreme revelation of 
God in Jesus Christ, in the value of righteous- 
ness, and that the ideals and forces with which 
you have to do in your calling are to transform 
the lives and shape the course of humanity. To 

108 



THE PREACHING FOR THE TIMES 

believe in the great realities of spiritual life 
with contagious conviction, and to interpret 
them with intellectual perspective and spiritual 
insight, will set the Christian prophet in the 
front ranks of humanity's march, 

" On, on to the bounds of the waste, 
On to the City of God." 

Whatever the art critic may say of the exe- 
cution of the sculptor's conception, that daring 
ideal of St. Gauden's, in his statue of Phillips 
Brooks in Trinity churchyard, is true to the 
fact in the experience of every real preacher of 
the everlasting gospel — the preacher is the hu- 
man voice, the burning heart, the living inter- 
preter of the mighty Christ, before whom he 
stands, uttering His timeless truth in the vocab- 
ulary of his time. The preacher is a man of 
God, speaking forth the things of God, so that 
they may become realities in the lives of men. 
It is deep answering unto deep. It is John the 
Baptist on the banks of the Jordan, with the 
desert-wonder in his eye. It is Paul, with the 
passion of the heavenly vision burning in his 
soul. It is Savonarola, rousing the people of 

109 



THE OUTLOOK FOR REUNION 

Florence with the mighty imperatives of the 
gospel. It is John Wesley in England, and 
Phillips Brooks in Boston, making the things of 
the Spirit as much realities in the experience of 
men as the things of the street. 

To sum up this whole discussion, the preach- 
ing for the times is the everlasting gospel of the 
Son of God, preached in the vernacular of the 
present day; its perennially vital truths poured 
into the thought-forms which will appeal with 
conviction to the minds of the age; its age- 
less message, deliverance from the power and 
guilt of sin by Jesus Christ, the Divine Savior; 
the fullness and satisfaction of spiritual life, the 
sure evidence of its own divineness, and this 
message proclaimed with a positiveness born out 
of the living experience of the preacher — that is 
the gospel for this and for every age. 



110 



VII 

The Supreme Issue 

JL HE livest problem of society to-day is the 
moral issue. Questions of economic and social 
betterment and of every form of human uplift 
ground on personal character. Too little ac- 
count has been taken of the "economic aspect 
of morality." It is worth while to teach a boy 
to drive a nail straight; it is even more worth 
while to give him will-power to keep straight. 
It is worth while to train young men for larger 
wages and for economic efficiency; it is even more 
important to send them into the world with 
moral worth. " In the family, at the ballot-box, 
and on the market heartcraft is even more 
indispensable than handcraft." The supreme 
questions to-day are not wages, housing, labor 
and capital, tariff and trade. The supreme issue 
is moral character. To inspire and to train men 

111 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

for integrity, for moral purpose, and for spir- 
itual passion, that is the great business of life; 
and any institution that contributes to that 
end is indispensable to the welfare of society. 
Conscience is discredited to-day by arrogant 
science and rampant commercialism. But con- 
science is here; it only needs to be educated and 
stirred. The pressure of the universe is behind 
it. There are windows in every human life 
that open heavenward. We only need to call 
upon men as the sons of God. We may forget 
the moralness of the universe, but there is a 
power that is ceaselessly working for righteous- 
ness far beyond our individual acts. 

Lord Roseberry, in his rectoral address at 
the Glasgow University, said: "The first need 
of the country is the lack of men, first-rate 
men." The English statesman's estimate of 
conditions in the British Empire has wider ap- 
plication. The crying need in political life, in 
business, in the Church, everywhere, is for men 
— men whom the flattery of the crowd can not 
swerve from duty, whom popular clamor will not 
stampede, whom bribery will not buy. And 
such character can not be developed except as 

112 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 

men are grounded on moral principle, except as 
they hear everlasting insistence upon the divine 
authority of the Ten Commandments. 

Now the Church is the one institution that 
is teaching and trying to enforce the moral 
duties of life. By its worship and sacraments, 
by its pulpit and benevolent ministries, the 
Church is compelling men to bring their conduct 
to the approval of Almighty God. It is holding 
up to men the infinite verities of truth, right- 
eousness, and eternal destiny. The one great 
function of the Church is to make men see the 
spiritual and eternal values of life. 

A judge in the Supreme Court of North Car- 
olina, in a public address, declared that it would 
be utterly impossible for the courts, in any ade- 
quate manner, to enforce the laws of the land 
but for the influence of the Church. To silence 
the pulpits would be to rob the courts of their 
power to administer justice. The Wall Street 
Journal, in setting forth the most urgent needs 
of the country for business prosperity and in- 
dustrial thrift, made an impassioned plea for a 
revival of old-fashioned honesty. And what of 
the various reform movements which are look- 

8 113 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

ing toward a truer democracy and the establish- 
ment of right relations among men as neighbors? 
Their ideals and their only effective inspiration 
have come from the Christian Church. For 
any man in the twentieth century to say that 
the Church is struggling for a "dead issue," is 
simply to advertise a nerveless pessimism or an 
utter ignorance of the vital forces which are at 
work in modern society for the betterment of 
the race. 

The Christian prophet flashes the warning- 
signals on the highways of life. He opens hori- 
zons broader than shop or market, and furnishes 
the ideals and motives indispensable for every 
occasion and for every relation in life. "His 
words fall on shadowed lives, and light shines 
again on their pathway. They strengthen 
wavering wills to resist temptation; they turn 
the faces of wayward souls heavenward in peni- 
tence;" they revive the doubting with courage. 
Has the time come when this moral and spir- 
itual ministry is no longer needed? We have 
more science, greater wealth, finer art, better 
houses, and more comforts than ever before in 
the world's history. The educated mind and 

114 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 

the trained hand are common possessions. 
These are the tools which are indispensable to 
the highest efficiency in life. But is there no 
one needed to encourage men harrowed by busi- 
ness cares, to guide the young in their struggle 
with doubt, to strengthen young men fighting 
passions fiercer than the beasts of the jungle, to 
cheer the poor in their hard lot, and to brace 
the trembling hearts of those who are passing 
into the valley of the shadow of death? 

Surely it means something to have one insti- 
tution, while claiming for its mission the author- 
ity of Heaven, dedicated to keeping alive the 
glow and the power of Jesus' ideals of life. To 
have a voice that is forever crying in the midst 
of rich and poor alike, that man is a citizen of 
heaven and can not live by bread alone, is 
vastly worth while. And this note of moral 
authority must always be heard in the pulpit. 
The minister can not dogmatize upon petty 
matters of personal conduct. The authority of 
the pulpit is not despotic dictation, but vital 
inspiration; not infallible certainty over-riding 
the reason, but the power of personal influence. 
To lead men to Him who is the Way, the Truth, 

115 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

and the Life; to show men where rest the ever- 
lasting foundations of religion; to reveal to men 
"the mighty sweep of moral purpose through 
the centuries;" to discover to men the primacy 
and power of the inner life, is the supreme busi- 
ness of the Christian Church. 

Our ears are filled to-day with the hue and 
cry that the pulpit has lost its power. The 
pulpit is always a power when there is a man of 
power in the pulpit. What Savonarola was in 
Florence, John Wesley in England, Spurgeon in 
London, Henry Ward Beecher in New York, 
Phillips Brooks in Boston, every minister, ac- 
cording to his ability and consecration, may be 
in his own place. There is no decadence of the 
ministry in real and far-reaching influence over 
the lives of men. A young man listened to a 
sermon by Lyman Beecher on "The Sovereignty 
of God," hastened to his chamber, and on his 
knees dedicated himself to God. That was the 
beginning of the work of Wendell Phillips as a 
reformer. The humble preacher of Ecclefechan 
spoke for half a century through the writings of 
Thomas Carlyle, who said, "The mark of that 
man is on me." Sometimes men without vision 

116 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 

stand as religious leaders; the messenger is with- 
out a message. Instead of hope and faith the 
people hear a whine or a wail; instead of self- 
forgetful service there is at times worldly self- 
seeking. But for men of vision, of trained in- 
tellect, of burning heart, with a passion to serve 
their fellows, with a message from God, spoken 
in the language of to-day, there is a hearing, 
there is a field for useful service, there is an im- 
mortality of honor — and never greater than now. 
But if the minister is to be a mere phono- 
graph of ancient dogmas, or the administrator 
of petty ecclesiastical affairs, or if he has no 
"Thus saith the Lord" for his generation, he is 
indeed struggling for a dead issue, and is in a 
decadent profession. Moreover, if the great, 
all-pervading conviction of his mind is that 
God lives and moves in the earth, brooding over 
human lives with everlasting love, his message 
is vital. If he is indeed a prophet of the truth, 
who has the Zeitgeist on his side, who is a citi- 
zen of two worlds, who studies the temper of 
his time and comes forth in the presence of the 
Eternal Spirit with a message for every mood 
and for every man, his work is indispensable, 

117 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

his task is fascinating and glorious. For, after 
all, the mightiest forces at work in the world for 
human advancement are our moral ideals and 
spiritual impulses. These determine the course 
of civilization, the development of trade, the 
policies of State, and the safety and happiness 
of society. 



118 



VIII 

The Apostolic Task and its 
Reaction 

XF the contention of the preceding chapters 
has been sustained, this is not a bad day for 
religion. It is a fact that Christian faith makes 
for the more joyous and effective living of life. 
The truth of Christianity works, and its vindi- 
cation everywhere is, that in the final outcome 
it is the only thing that will work. Life becomes 
more livable, more enjoyable, and more effective 
when it is caught up in a great confidence in a 
Divine Providence. Life is more inspiring and 
courageous when we believe that prayer ac- 
complishes something. Life becomes more he- 
roic when we live it by the power of an endless 
life. The Bible is meeting the vital needs of 
human life with exhaustless spiritual resources. 
Philosophers and sages, saints and scholars bear 
their reverent testimony — "One is our Master, 

119 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

even Christ." The Church represents the spir- 
itual part of humanity expressing itself in its 
search for God, and for truth, and for the foun- 
tains of eternal hope and comfort. And in this 
quest for God, regenerated, consecrated men 
are still appearing with the announcement, 
"Ourselves your servants, for Jesus' sake." The 
very foundation of our life and the source of 
our strength are in moral character and spiritual 
experience, inspired and nurtured by the Chris- 
tian Church. The final vindication of our holy 
faith is that it makes, and makes mightily, for 
rich and victorious life. 

What, then, is the outlook for the Christian 
faith? The outlook for the Christian faith de- 
pends upon our inlook into the life eternal, and 
our obedience to the will of Christ. There is a 
profound philosophy in the great commission of 
Christ. In that supreme moment on Olivet, 
when He gave to The Twelve the vision of com- 
ing power, He pointed to the ends of the earth. 
"When ye have received power from on high 
ye shall be witnesses unto Me, beginning at 
Jerusalem and unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth." The power from on high was for their 

120 



APOSTOLIC TASK AND ITS REACTION 

world-wide gospeling; but not until their feet 
had stood in the ends of the earth would they 
realize the supreme energy of the Divine Spirit. 
" Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel 
to every creature; and lo, I am with you always." 
It is a divine command. But it is more. It is 
the statement of this profound truth — the largest 
realization of the presence of Christ is in the 
widest fulfillment of the command of Christ. 
In other words, there is an inevitable reaction 
of the mission of the Church upon the experi- 
ence of the Church, of the work of the Christian 
upon the life of the Christian. The expansion 
of Christianity is absolutely essential to the 
vitality of Christianity. Just in proportion as 
our Christian activity widens, our Christian ex- 
perience deepens and strengthens. We can not 
keep the unsearchable riches of Christ unless we 
give them forth to the world. There is an es- 
sential relation between Paul's mission to the 
Gentiles and his conversion. His conversion 
had in it the potential energy of his far-off mis- 
sion. His mission, in turn, fully developed the 
latent possibilities of his conversion. He does 
not wait in Damascus until the mystery of his 

121 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

new experience has been fathomed. He leaves 
Antioch for Asia Minor before his theology is 
fully developed. He moves westward into 
Europe before the Churches of Asia have been 
grounded in the faith. This possessor of the 
unsearchable riches of Christ, his own vast 
wealth not yet explored, is eager to preach 
Christ to the world. And in this larger ministry 
he appropriates ever more and more completely 
the treasures of the gospel. The widest mission 
of the Christian gives vitality and enlargement 
and strength to Christian experience. 

This is a truth with which we are perfectly 
familiar in other spheres of life. Take the mat- 
ter of citizenship. The man who is most active 
in the promotion of good citizenship and is most 
earnest in his efforts for the welfare of his fellow- 
citizens, realizes most largely the meaning and 
the glory of citizenship. In the world of art 
the more the artist tries to make the beautiful 
the possession of his fellows, the more deeply 
does he enter into the very soul of the beautiful. 
This truth has long been a commonplace in the 
field of learning. The more widely you extend 
any knowledge you possess, the more completely 

122 



APOSTOLIC TASK AND ITS REACTION 

you become its master. The missionary idea 
lies at the heart of our science and art and poli- 
tics. It is a law of life that expansion always 
reacts upon inner development. The more you 
do, the more you are able to know. The wider 
your activity, the richer your character. 

How does the aggressive effort to spread the 
gospel influence Christian character? First of 
all, it gives us a truer appreciation of Jesus 
Christ. Every day of the world's history is 
compelling stronger conviction of the unique 
character of our Lord, and of the matchless 
worth of His teachings. The popular cry, "Back 
to Christ" for theology, for laws of right con- 
duct, and for light upon the problems of life, 
is only the assertion of the faith of mankind in 
the solitary grandeur of Jesus as a teacher of 
religion. As Professor Harnack has said, "For 
the man of the twentieth century it is either 
Christ's God or none." But how is Christ's 
God to become ours? How is the purity of 
Christian doctrine safeguarded from one gener- 
ation to another? Certainly not by forcing the 
words of Jesus into hard-and-fast dogma. Cer- 
tainly never by ecclesiastical threats. The his- 

123 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

tory of the Church bears witness that the great- 
est factor in preserving the faith of the fathers 
is the missionary spirit. In his " Gospel for An 
Age of Doubt," Doctor Van Dyke has pointed 
out how the missionary enterprise has kept alive 
the vital truths of Christianity. In the Dark 
Ages it was through the missionary zeal of St. 
Augustine and St. Patrick and Colomba and 
Boniface that the gospel was kept pure. In the 
Middle Ages again the great missionary orders 
of St. Francis and St. Dominic preserved to the 
world the true faith of Christ. And after the 
Reformation, when spiritual faith had declined, 
when Churchmen wrangled over barren dogmas, 
when infidelity and godlessness held sway both 
in Europe and America, it was the revival of the 
Wesleys and the missionary movement of the 
last century that brought to light again the 
simplicity of the gospel. The effort to preach 
the gospel to every creature in the world has 
always separated the chaff of human specula- 
tion from the kernel of divine truth. We can 
not conquer the great sins of the day and the 
superstitions of pagan peoples with an abstrac- 
tion. The practical demand for a gospel that 

124 



APOSTOLIC TASK AND ITS REACTION 

is the power of God unto salvation to every one 
that believes, has saved the gospel. 

Further, the missionary enterprise has given 
the Church its mightiest apologetic. We some- 
times wonder if Christianity can stand the crit- 
ical investigation of the human intellect. The 
very foundations of the Christian Church are 
being questioned. More important than all 
the modern defenses of the faith is the evidence 
of the missionary. We witness to-day the gospel 
going into slums and prisons with regenerating 
power. We see it on the native soil of the great 
ethnic faiths which are declining, in the midst 
of "the stagnant calm of arrested civilizations," 
making converts by the hundred thousand. 
From every continent and from the farthest 
islands of the sea, from every tribe and race of 
men there comes back the testimony, "He is 
able to save unto the uttermost all that come 
unto Him." Here is an unanswerable argument 
for the divineness of our faith. The work of 
the philosopher and the theologian is important. 
But there is no strong, vital belief in the di- 
vinity and sovereignty of Jesus Christ possible, 
based solely on metaphysical theories and Scrip- 

125 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

ture proof-texts. When the testimony of men 
saved, renewed, and sanctified comes from 
every nation and kindred and tongue, the foun- 
dation of the Christian faith stands sure, in 
spite of skeptical cavil. You can not invalidate 
an experience with a theory. A fact is more 
conclusive than an interrogation. To see na- 
tions coming to the brightness of His rising, to 
see the gospel meeting the great moral needs of 
every condition of human society to-day, puts 
a higher note of certainty into the Christian 
Church. No destructive criticism can invalidate 
the testimony of the ten thousand white-souled 
martyrs of China. 

How strikingly is the contention that the 
missionary enterprise develops a truer apprecia- 
tion of Christ supported by the life of Paul. 
When did his masterly utterances concerning 
Christ and Christian experience appear? Not 
at the beginning of his apostolate. His most 
exalted utterances were those written toward 
the close of his missionary career. There is be- 
yond all question a profounder insight into spir- 
itual truth, a firmer grasp upon spiritual veri- 
ties, and a brighter vision of the glory of God 

126 



APOSTOLIC TASK AND ITS REACTION 

in the face of Jesus Christ, in the epistles of 
the Romans and Ephesians, Philippians and Co- 
lossians, than in the First and Second Thessa- 
lonians. And the difference is not one of intel- 
lectual development alone. It is that sight of 
the soul, it is that vision of the Eternal, that 
can come only to the man whose life is lived to 
make all men see the mystery of the gospel. 

The most fruitful periods in the develop- 
ment of Christian doctrine have been the mis- 
sionary epochs of the Church. It is no mere 
coincidence that the greatest theologians of the 
Church have been contemporary with the great 
missionaries. The man who leads us most 
deeply into the secret of the Lord is not the 
closet speculator, but he who is most active in 
the spread of the gospel. The man who sees is 
the man who does. The man who knows the 
truth is the man who lives the life. It may be 
said that our faulty characters and our meager 
achievements are negative evidences of the fact 
that the revelation of Christ to the world has 
not closed. "Eye hath not seen, ear hath not 
heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man 
to conceive the things that God hath prepared 

127 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

for those that love Him." This is a prophecy 
not of heavenly glories, but of the unpictured 
revelations of God to His obedient children on 
the earth. We are to be guided into all the 
truth. But if we are ever to be liberated by the 
truth of Christ, if we are ever to appropriate 
His thought, if His language ever becomes our 
vernacular, if we are ever to know Him with 
that knowledge which is eternal life, we must 
throw ourselves into a supreme effort to make 
Him known to the whole world. The spirit of 
out-reaching service, limited only by the out- 
posts of human need, will alone reveal to us the 
mind of the Master. 

There is still another element in the reaction 
of the missionary task upon Christian life. The 
effort to make Christ known to all men realizes 
the fullest development of Christian character. 
Napoleon said, "He who does not attack and 
plunge his standard into the thick of the enemy's 
ranks must soon pull down his flag." This is 
the law of all higher progress. Whenever the 
people of God have deserted their mission to the 
world, material decline and moral retrogression 
have always followed. Read the story of an- 

128 



APOSTOLIC TASK AND ITS REACTION 

cient Israel. The great leaders and prophets of 
the Hebrew people always held before the 
nation their unique calling, their mission to the 
world. And under the inspiration of this idea 
of a world-relation for missionary service, the 
growth of the nation in political power and 
moral influence is without a parallel in history. 
Doctor A. B. Davidson, in his book on "Old 
Testament Prophecy," points out with great 
force the missionary destiny of the Hebrew 
people. They were intended to be the mission- 
aries to the world at large, their calling was to 
evangelize the nations of the earth. "Nations 
shall come to Thy light, and kings to the bright- 
ness of Thy rising," was Judaism's prophetic 
destiny. But how tragically the nation failed! 
Her refusal to be a light to the Gentiles was the 
forfeiture of her destiny. The people became 
absorbed in their own peculiar privileges. They 
clung to the idea of election; they lost the idea 
of service. Political selfishness and spiritual 
pride ruled them. Pharisaism and Sadduceeism 
were born. They became a nation of priests 
instead of prophets, of scribes instead of mis- 
sionaries. So long as the nation cherished her 
9 129 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

ideal of lightening the world, Judaism was a 
resistless power. But the loss of her missionary 
impulse was the decline of her political power and 
her noble character. The doom of Judaism was 
the forsaking of her mission to the Gentile world. 
In the history of the nations this fact is 
written in letters of living light, that the nation 
that turns the stream of its activity upon itself 
is doomed to decline. Three centuries ago 
Spain was the imperial power of the Western 
world. To-day all her greatness is gone. Then 
the grandest opportunity for missionary service 
before any nation of the modern world. But 
Spain disowned the missionary idea of civiliza- 
tion, and this is the price. The nations repre- 
senting the Anglo-Saxon race which stand in the 
forefront in power and influence in the world to- 
day are the ones that have accepted the mis- 
sionary idea of civilization. In his "Principles 
of Western Civilization," Mr. Kidd contends 
that the races and nations which hold the seats 
of power and influence in modern times are 
those which have followed what he calls the 
principle of projected efficiency, or the service of 
the future instead of the service of the present, 

130 



APOSTOLIC TASK AND ITS REACTION 

This is simply the utterance in specific terms of 
the fundamental law of all spiritual progress — 
in order to keep any treasure for ourselves we 
must use it for the world. 

We have a striking illustration of this truth 
in New England Puritanism. It shows the in- 
evitable loss to inward life that comes from re- 
pressing missionary activity. Puritanism in 
New England had an avowed religious purpose. 
As Phillips Brooks has said, "Our Puritan fath- 
ers were deeply and overwhelmingly religious. 
But the movement had but little missionary 
zeal. Their chief concern was the nurture of 
their own faith and making strong their own 
institutions." The decline of Puritanism began 
with the loss of missionary zeal. Puritanism, 
once a mighty moral and spiritual force, de- 
generated into a barren speculation in theology, 
and into a fussy conscientiousness, creating 
petty rules for conduct. Heresies were rife. 
Spiritual depression prevailed. There was no 
enthusiasm in worship, no large hopefulness in 
service. Puritanism, by turning the stream of 
her effort in upon herself, checked the tides of 
her own spiritual life. 

131 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

But a new Puritanism was born. It was 
when the students of Williamstown behind the 
haystack knelt before God, consecrating them- 
selves to the spread of the gospel. This was the 
beginning of the reawakening of the deep moral 
convictions and the mighty spiritual enthusi- 
asms of early Puritanism. New life came to 
the Churches of New England when they began 
to make Christ known to the world. When- 
ever the Church resolves itself into a close cor- 
poration it becomes a bankrupt in spiritual 
power. 

No fact, then, is more certain than this: 
that in the life of nations, of civilizations, and 
of religious movements, vitality and strength 
depend upon expansion. The missionary idea 
lies at the very heart of the progress of our 
higher life. 

But an even more practical illustration of 
the reaction of Christian missions upon Chris- 
tian character is found in our personal religious 
life. We have an experience of Christ's wonder- 
ful salvation. For what? Not merely to get 
us into heaven, but to make every saved man 
a "point of radiant light and power," for making 

132 



APOSTOLIC TASK AND ITS REACTION 

Christ known to other men. Christian faith is 
not a kind of insurance policy which is good for 
two worlds. It is a holy privilege out of which 
rises a high obligation. 

Whenever religious experience aims solely at 
its own self-culture it degenerates into selfish- 
ness and littleness. No man is to be more 
pitied, and none deserves to be more unspar- 
ingly rebuked than he who is trying only to 
save his own soul, and doing nothing for the 
spread of the gospel. What we need to redeem 
our life from the petty trifles and the peddling 
littleness which are often the peculiar tempta- 
tion of religious people, is to crusade for some 
cause whose very greatness is impressive, even 
impossible to all but men of Christian faith. 
Think of the cosmopolitan largeness of the mis- 
sionary enterprise; an ideal for human life so 
sublime that it could have originated only in 
the mind of the Eternal Christ; a cause that will 
broaden our sympathy so as to take in every 
man; a cause at once so noble and so difficult 
as to call forth the love of Christ and the hero- 
ism of the cross. Now, it is when a man bows 
beneath the great tasks of the Infinite God that 

133 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

he rises up in the strength of gianthood. A man 
embodies the character of the cause which he 
serves. Gladstone was one of the noblest figures 
of English history. But the greatness of the 
cause which he served made him the grand old 
man of England. Lincoln was great. But it 
was the greatness of the cause which he served 
that made him the first American. Paul the 
missionary is richer in his character than Paul 
the evangelist of Antioch. Take upon your 
heart the largeness of apostolic Christianity, and 
you will grow into the largeness of apostolic 
character. Theodore Parker once said that if 
all that had ever been given to missions had 
produced only one such character as Adoniram 
Judson, it would have been worth the expendi- 
ture. Set before a man a work so sublime in 
its conception, so vast in its scope, so divine in 
its obligation, so difficult in its execution, and 
all the greatness in our human nature is called 
forth. Is it any wonder that the missionary en- 
terprise has enrolled the tallest knights of the 
centuries, the mightiest men of God? Paul and 
Livingstone, Carey and Judson, Morrison and 
Butler are among the immortals. 

134 



APOSTOLIC TASK AND ITS REACTION 

Now if this contention is true, the missionary 
enterprise is the most potent factor in meeting 
the supreme need of the Christian Church to- 
day. Where is the weakest place in the Chris- 
tian forces of the twentieth century? Not in 
our material wealth, for that we are counting 
by scores of millions; not in organization, for 
that is complete; not in doctrine, for that is 
more rational and more Scriptural than ever 
before. Our weakness is in the narrowness and 
selfishness of Christian character. We are in 
danger of losing the lofty enthusiasm of the 
Spirit, and of becoming low T -toned in aspiration 
and unheroic in effort and sordid in ambition. 
And nothing can save us from this except the 
romance and the heroism of foreign missions. 
Follow the apostolic program of Christianity, 
and apostolic character is the result. 

This being true, the obligation to carry 
Christ's love to all men is put on a higher plane 
than we commonly think. We have been urged 
to give the gospel to the unconverted because 
men are lost to the highest life without Christ. 
We have looked upon the awful miseries, the 
wretched degradations, the appalling sins, and 

135 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

the blind despair of pagan peoples, and our pity 
has been moved. Human need does appeal 
mightily to our nobler sentiment for help. But 
our brother's need for the gospel is matched by 
the gospel's need for our brother. Rob Chris- 
tianity of its missionary spirit, and it is a weak- 
ened and mangled thing — a body of doctrine 
without vital power, a system of morals without 
spiritual force, a set of ceremonies without in- 
spiration for worship or duty. There is no gen- 
uine Christianity that is not essentially mis- 
sionary. There is no distinction between the 
missionary spirit and the Christian spirit. The 
missionary zeal of the Christian Church is not 
a wave of exceptional devotion. It is rather 
something essential to Christianity. The vi- 
tality of our own faith and the perfection of our 
Christian character call upon us to preach the 
gospel to every creature. 

In the light of this truth, the evangelization 
of the world takes on a larger meaning. It 
means more than supplanting pagan civilization 
by Christian. It is more than the opportunity 
for every man to believe in Jesus Christ. It 
q^ans a more stalwart race of Christians, with 

136 






APOSTOLIC TASK AND ITS REACTION 

a more vital faith, richer in experience, and 

liker to Christ in character. When we claim the 

whole world for Christ, we really claim the whole 

Christ for ourselves. It becomes true for us 

that 

" The light that shines farthest 
Shines brightest nearest home." 



137 



JUN 9 VsVi 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservatlonTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



